Michael gove

Coffee House readers won't be surprised by the Independent's report that Michael Gove has been telling friends he has no objections to profit-making schools: he explained his position on the matter at length to Fraser in December. Then, the Education Secretary said he was keen for the one profit-seeking school in this country, IES in Suffolk, to make the case to the public for more profit-seeking schools: 'What I said to them [IES] is the same argument that Andrew Adonis has made: we’ve created the opportunity for you to demonstrate what you can do and win the argument in the public square. You have an organisation that has been criticised, in some cases demonised, now running a state school.

Michael Gove’s reformation of the education system from top to bottom has so far been unstoppable. Often though, the Education Secretary's detractors bellow there is a lack of proof that his reforms are doing any good. Today's news (£) that hundreds of primary schools have benefited from Gove's tougher approach to internal management adds credence to the view that his freeing up of our education system is working. This year, the number of schools below the government’s baseline target dropped by more than half: ‘League tables of this year’s primary school test results showed that 521 were beneath his minimum threshold. Of these, 37 have since been replaced by academies with new sponsors or governance, and seven have closed.

On Monday, I interviewed Michael Gove for the new Christmas double issue of The Spectator. It’s out tomorrow but here’s a longer version, arranged in subheadings so CoffeeHousers can skip over bits they’re not interested in. This is the picture that stands behind Michael Gove’s desk: an imposing McCarthy-era poster which saying: 'Sure, I want to fight Communism - but how?' In their less charitable moments, Tories may argue that his Department of Education is as good a place as any to start. The strength of its grip over state schools has long been the subject of political laments and Yes, Minister sketches. Confronting the educational establishment was too much for the Blair reformers and even the Thatcher government.

George Osborne briefed the Cabinet this morning on tomorrow's Autumn Statement, giving ministers some good news and some bad news. The good news is that he is launching £5 billion of extra capital spending spread over three years as part of the fiscally neutral package tomorrow. That package will fund new schools, science and transport schemes, the Prime Minister's official spokesman said this morning. He told journalists: 'The Chancellor and the Chief Secretary have told Cabinet that they will announce at Autumn Statement over £5bn of capital investment to invest in the economy and equip Britain for the global race.

Michael Gove’s savage comments about Brian Leveson at yesterday’s Spectator awards have been making headlines everywhere today.

Years from now, political historians may regard 2012’s Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards as the first round of Boris Johnson versus Michael Gove in the race to be Tory leader. Gove was the event’s compere, and he gave a masterful off-the-cuff speech, full of wit and light. He said that the Spectator, which is once again being edited by a comprehensive school graduate, is a meritocratic beacon in an otherwise privileged world. The Guardian, for instance, has never been edited by someone from a comprehensive school, and no common oik has ever been the BBC’s DG. Gove’s self-confessed ‘Marxist vision’ is of a Utopian England where the Guardian and the BBC follow the Spectator’s example.

Michael Gove, the most important and successful Aberdonian politician since, well, since I don't know actually, is also that rarest of things: a grown-up cabinet minister. He knows the importance of praise. Consider this passage - highlighted by John Rentoul - from a speech he gave on Child Protection this morning: Just as the Labour Government early in its life felt that teachers needed to be told how to operate – down to the tiniest detail of what should happen in every literacy or numeracy hour – so the Labour Government towards the end of its life felt it had to produce thousands of pages of central Government prescription on social work practice. Both sets of interventions reflected a lack of trust in the frontline.

To be fair to Kevin Brennan, he seems to have updated his attack line on Michael Gove since his 'don't-call-teachers-names' press release that Labour sent out overnight. The party's shadow education minister is now attacking the Education Secretary for inconsistency, arguing that his announcement today on improving teacher training contradicts the decision to allow academies and free schools to employ unqualified teachers. He has just told BBC News: 'But what's rather strange about what the Government is doing is at the same time it's saying there should be more rigour in the testing of teachers as they go in to the profession, it's saying more and more schools can hire teachers that are unqualified.

The great paradox of British politics is that the left moan about inequality, but it’s the right who will remedy it. Ed Miliband is proposing the restoration of the old order, where the poor get the worst schools and the rich get the best (and the opportunities that flow from it). Labour plans to tax the rich more, and give money to the poor as if by way of compensation. The Tories want to revolutionise the system, so the poor have the same choice of schools that today only the rich can afford. Labour wants to make sure the unemployed are well looked-after. The Tories want to make sure the unemployed are rewarded — not penalised — if they seek work. It may sound perverse.

The speed with which Michael Gove is going about his education reforms means that he is creating facts on the grounds, facts which Labour will—I suspect—have to accept by the next election. Parents with children at new free schools and academies are not going to vote for a party that is going to abolish their child’s school. For example, the mother of a child at a Birmingham free school—Geraldine Henry—spoke at Tory conference today in favour of free schools. I expect that Henry would never have expected to find herself speaking at a Tory conference but she clearly felt compelled to come and promote and defend her son’s school.