Is Michael Gove as dangerous as he sounds?

[Flosshilde]

Fortunately he doesn't have any say in Scottish education, which doesn't mean that there aren't some who would like to disrupt the connection between local communities & their schools by taking them away from local authorities.

Similarly, Andrew Rawnsley fortunately doesn't have any say in the NHS in Scotland - which will remain an NHS while in England healthcare will continue to be privatised.

[mercia]

Andrew Rawnsley

the journalist?

[Flosshilde]

the journalist?

Andrew Lansley - my excuse is that as he holds no jurisdiction in Scotland I can't be expected to remember his name

[Chris Newman]

"Michael Gove reportedly claimed £7,000 for furnishing a London property before 'flipping' his designated second home to a house in his constituency, a property for which he claimed around £13,000 to cover stamp duty. Around a third of the first £7,000 were spent at an interior design company owned by Gove's mother-in-law. Gove also claimed for a cot mattress, despite children's items being banned under the Commons rule. Gove said he would repay the claim for the cot mattress, but maintained that his other claims were "below the acceptable threshold costs for furniture" and that the property flipping was necessary "to effectively discharge my parliamentary duties". While he was moving between his multiple homes, he stayed at the Pennyhill Park Hotel and Spa, charging the taxpayer more than £500 per night's stay.".

The man is clearly from the Harvey Baines School of Accounting (and Compassion).

[Paul Sherratt]

Lat,

Wasn't the cot mattress for his ( Gove's ) own personal use ?

[Lateralthinking1]

Paul, (Almost) nothing would surprise me, Lat.

[Chris Newman]

Lat,

Wasn't the cot mattress for his ( Gove's ) own personal use ?

Wunderbar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[scottycelt]

... Similarly, Andrew Rawnsley fortunately doesn't have any say in the NHS in Scotland. ...

Fortunately indeed ...

If, in our comparatively cosy little world, there is anything worse than an irritatingly pompous Scottish Conservative politician it is a smugly self-righteous, left-leaning English hack.

[BetweenTheStaves]

He's far MORE dangerous than he sounds. His mentor is Chris Woodhead and you can't get more dangerous than that. Both talk the same simplistic twaddle. Neither has recent teaching experience. However Michael Gove is yet to be discredited.

Since when did having any actual experience of life/work etc become a pre-requisite for Cabinet Ministers of any ilk?

I thought that League Tables were introduced by the last lot? Measuring the unmeasurable or knee-jerk politics seemed to be the mantra of Labour. At least the Coalition have some bright people who are giving serious thought to the woes of the country. Might not be what the left want to hear.

[Chris Newman]

Since when did having any actual experience of life/work etc become a pre-requisite for Cabinet Ministers of any ilk?

I thought that League Tables were introduced by the last lot? Measuring the unmeasurable or knee-jerk politics seemed to be the mantra of Labour. At least the Coalition have some bright people who are giving serious thought to the woes of the country. Might not be what the left want to hear.

Both sides have some bright people who give (and gave) serious thought to the woes of the country and far too often the conclusions of some of their thinking will leave irreparable scars on the country's fabric. Brightness is not enough. A country's education is far too important to be left entirely to the whims of mavericks of whatever political ilk. Education in Britain is wracked with control by dogma, cowardice and secrecy. Sadly consultation with practitioners went out with Kenneth Baker. He always publicly claimed to have consulted teachers and heads about his proposals. Inevitably thirty different vitally important discussion documents would arrive on the headteacher's front doormat on the 21st of December with replies expected by the 6th of January, similarly the first day of the schools' Easter and Summer holidays with two weeks to reply. Some heads missed them as they were already driving to the seaside, wherever. Most would not have dared to call staff back from their holidays. This underhand pretence at openness became the norm for subsequent Ministers of Education who generally only last a year or eighteen months so consistency of policy and method is never to be expected. Only two were fair, honest and genuinely listened to educationists: John MacGregor (Tory) and Estelle Morris (Labour): both were in office for merely a year: the first being moved to Minister of Defence, the second resigning on principle.

[BetweenTheStaves]

Chris, thanks for sharing that. Sounds as if you speak from (bitter?) experience.

I can't comment on what the Tories achieved/did not achieve while they were last in power. But these tables from the OECD comparing UK education ranking with other international countries seems to be a sad indictment of the Labour Government's spell in power and an indicator of just how much they screwed up our education system. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11929277

[Chris Newman]

You could call it bitter experience, certainly disappointment. I left teaching when the National Curriculum (and publishers who provided the back up material) began to tell me which novels, essays and poems I should be teaching. The freedom to encourage exploration was shackled. In the nineties a friend persuaded me to come back as things became better and I quickly became head of English. Then Chris Woodhead decided every lesson should be broken up into 5 and 10 minute chunks where specific things were done or explored. Fine: this works well in TEFL with adults wishing to learn to SPEAK English in a month but our kids never had more than 15 to 20 minutes to write anything substantial in schooltime. They rarely had time to sit and work alone. We relied on them getting stories, essays, analysis etc done as homework. If you set a lesson for story or essay writing Big Brother or Sister would say "Where is the Structure in this lesson? Why aren't they discussing the second paragraph with a neighbour?" To answer that they will never get their thoughts together and finish the work was not good enough.

Former pupils of mine include a High Court Judge, several well-known actors, prominent business men and so on, but more recently the system has let people down and not produced a sensible approach to the classroom. It began with the Tories in Thatcher's time. There classroom methodology changed on Baker's orders on a termly basis. As I have said there was a promising year with MacGregor but his skills were needed elsewhere. Labour came in with no policies and Blair admitted he would leave things alone whilst they found out what was happening so we had little change except that Chris Woodhead's influence continued for six years.

It frightens me that Gove, a close associate and disciple of Woodhead, is even more blinkered than his mentor and in a more powerful position than the man who derailed British education. He does not even use the charm of a wolf in sheep's clothing as Kenneth Baker could: he just tramples on through other people's ideas like that tank hijacked by a drunk in a Salisbury Plain village. My only hope is that with his appalling rudeness he will so offend David Cameron in conversation that he gets the push in a reshuffle. He really makes David Willetts seem an old sweetie (now that should take real skill.....but then comparison is not a skill).

[subcontrabass]

You could call it bitter experience, certainly disappointment. I left teaching when the National Curriculum (and publishers who provided the back up material) began to tell me which novels, essays and poems I should be teaching.

I moved from school teaching to higher education at around that time. During the 1980s there was an attempt to derive a National Curriculum for schools by investigating what was actualy being taught and working by consensus to produce an agreed core. This was rudely hijacked by the politicians who then imposed a centrally dictated and dubiously relevant straightjacket on what and how schools taught. Change in the governing party has made no changes to that process, merely a little tinkering with detail.

[Dave2002]

Like others here I had a diminishing view of Gove, but then I read more about his own personal circumstances and early upbringing. He may be misguided, but then so many of us are, but I think he really does have an interest in education.

Problems are not limited to the UK though - see this - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/

There are many issues, including "does weighing a pig make it any fatter?", and whether it really is possible to make significant improvements in education, whether or not measurements are taken, and to what extent injection of money makes a difference.

FWIW, and not to tar all with the same brush, many teachers, particularly in science subjects are just not competent enough. Why would anyone who could earn substantially more in engineering, accounting or (heaven forbid) in the City, go into teaching to be given relatively poor working conditions and lower pay? It's not PC to say so, but many teachers are women who teach because it's convenient for them to be able to work around their own children's lives.

Although teaching is now considered a graduate profession, many teachers do not have sufficiently high qualifications or ability in subjects that they teach.

Unfortunately the rot also sets in early, with poor understanding of important subject matter in primary schools. It is possible to teach subjects such as set theory and logic at an early age, which would lay a strong foundation for later work in mathematics, and this can be done in ways which are not threatening for children, and would at least enable some to progress later to far higher levels of attainment than at present. Many teachers are people who have found problems with some "difficult" subjects, and they manage to put the idea into their pupil's minds that it's OK not to persist with these - an avoidance strategy, rather than a "let's go for it, and see what happens" strategy.

Universities in the UK are continually facing problems due to incoming students just not having skills in mathematics and other science subjects which might have been assumed twenty or more years ago. This often means that the first year or two of a university education is spent playing catch up.

[french frank]

The whole philosophy of education seems riven with 'moral maze' type conflicts. Is there genuinely a system that allows each child to develop to his/her fullest potential, when they start on such unequal bases of ability and social advantage? What is the importance of assuring slower pupils that they are not 'failures' compared with their peers, and how do you allow the brightest to race ahead? I wonder, do educationalists and politicians in this country study the systems in Finland and S. Korea? - and what are the chances that they would dismiss them as 'not appropriate' for our country and our times?

Universities in the UK are continually facing problems due to incoming students just not having skills in mathematics and other science subjects which might have been assumed twenty or more years ago. This often means that the first year or two of a university education is spent playing catch up.

And, yet (yes, the old chestnut), degree classifications, like school public exam results, continue to rise.