Education

Polly Toynbee was on ‘mute’ on Sky News in my office, the remote wasn’t working, which is frustrating because I’d love to hear how someone mounts a passionate defence of why local government should have monopoly control of state schools. Very few things in politics are indefensible, but a system which doles out sink schools to sink estates is one of them. When Michael Gove was a journalist, he described comprehensive education as the greatest betrayal of the working class. And now, as Education Secretary, he is outlining a system that will give the poor the same choice of schools that the rich have. Who on earth could be against

It is quite telling that David Cameron’s first newspaper article since becoming Prime Minister is for the Daily Mail, and even more telling that its central message is, “you still have a Conservative Prime Minister”.  There then follows a series of reassurances about Dave’s political motivations (“I believe the state is your servant, never your master. I believe in the common sense and decency of the British people”) and about the policies contained in the coalition agreement. One line that jumped out at me, though, is this rather inspid description of the Tories’ radical school reform agenda: “We’re also giving parents, charities and other organisations the opportunity to set up

During coalition talks, wild rumours can fly – and some of them can be true. That’s why Michael Gove would have stopped many a Tory heart this morning by telling Andrew Marr that he was by no means wedded to a Cabinet job and then heaped praise on David Laws. The Gove schools policy is ranked by The Spectator as reason in itself to vote Tory and by The Economist as the best single policy of the election campaign. Might it be sacrificed? The 10am radio headlines were suggesting so.  I bumped into Gove just afterwards and asked him: panic over. He had simply sought to make clear that he

While both the Conservatives and LibDems support the idea of Swedish schools, a Lib-Con deal could kill the agenda stone dead. David Laws is proposing to allow local authorities to have the power to veto new schools – which would, in effect, mean no rollout. As we all know, this could strangle the Gove school agenda at birth. Local authorities, whether Labour or Tory, will hate the idea of competition in the provision of education. The local authorities and teachers’ unions are incredibly powerful, and defeated Thatcher, Adonis and Blair. They have also nobbled the LibDems to the extent that, I understand, David Laws believes that he could not get

The New Statesman has interviewed Douglas Alexander, who appeals, as Andrew Adonis has, to Liberal Democrat voters to back Labour to inaugurate what he terms a ‘New Dawn for Labour and progressive politics.’ Progressive is a vague term, but the best definition for it is reform to encourage social mobility. In this morning’s Times, former Fabian Stephen Pollard argued that only the Tories can guarantee this. For the time, Pollard says, he will vote Conservative and all because of Michael Gove’s schools reform.   ‘Mr Gove has promised that within four years of a Tory government, all parents will have the option of sending their child to an independent school

Clegg won’t join without proportional representation; Cameron says he won’t countenance such a ‘con’. Indeed, it runs deeper than that. Iain Martin has canvassed Tories from across the party and found that Cameron will get short shrift if he tries to reform the voting system at all. There is another consideration. This election has the potential to blow traditional party structure out of the water. Labour’s right will be marginalised by the unions’ grip over the party and Liberal Democrats like David Laws and Clegg (up to a point) have more in common with the One Nation Tories than they do with out and out left wingers like Kennedy and

The Spectator’s endorsement of David Cameron started with his ‘free schools’ policy – and we could have ended there. We said that this is, in itself, enough reason to vote Conservative. This week’s Economist has produced one of the best explanations of this policy, and its potential.  This is important because this election campaign shows that, while the public are indeed minded to oust Gordon Brown, they’re not terribly excited by the Tory offering. The Gove schools plan is something which, if properly expressed, cannot fail to capture the imagination. In my limited experience of persuading people why they should vote, I find the schools policy always works. The Tories,

Cameron has not, alas, broken free of the never-ending opinion poll bungee jump which is the story of his leadership of the Conservative Party. Cleggmania is a bubble – but the thing about bubbles is that one can never quite tell when they will burst. The Tories, who have lost the most votes due to this bubble, will have their needles out. But in my News of the World column today I suggest they focus on policy because they do have hard ideas that could radically change Britain. Cameron missed a trick by failing to mention his single best policy, Gove’s school reform, last week.  On immigration, his plan for reducing it

Why vote for Cameron? The reasons for voting against Gordon Brown are so numerous that the positive pro-Tory reasons for voting are often lost. This week’s Spectator gives you all the ammo you need to win around wavering friends, colleagues and family. We have restricted ourselves to the ten most compelling points. I summarise them below: 1. School reform. In itself, it’s enough reason to vote Tory. Gove has specifically promise that within four years of a Tory government everyone will have an independent school offering to educate their kid for free. This should have been a 1981 Tory proposal, but Keith Joseph lost a battle with the civil service

Michael Gove is always worth listening to when he speaks on schools reform – offering passionate rhetoric supported by detailed policy. But this morning he excelled himself. If you want a clear sense of what the Tories have in mind for making “opportunity more equal,” then I’d recommend you track down a copy of his presentation. I’ll try to link to it, if it appears online later. One point that jumped out at me was when Gove said a Tory government would introduce a bill “within days” of entering power, aimed at “making it harder for bureaucracies to block the creation of new schools”.  He added that he’d hope to