Michael Gove, the Tory Education Secretary in the coalition government, was a staunch Labour Party activist and trade unionist in his younger days partly because of his upbringing and a belief that working class children were being betrayed by the educational system.
He is now a leading conservative intellectual but still feels angry about the failure of our state schools to provide working class students with a decent education and the fact that children of wealthier parents who can afford private schools get a head start in life. But rather than the old leftist panacea of outlawing private schools and increasing taxes to allow local councils to spend more on “education” (including teachers’ pay) Gove came to the conclusion that the dead hand of the state education establishment (local education authorities (LEAs),teacher unions, education academics etc) was not keen on allowing any notion of competition to upset their cosy monopoly.
So one of his first decisions within days of entering office was to allow a wide variety of groups – charities, universities, businesses, educational groups, teachers or groups of parents – to submit proposals for setting up Free Schools, funded by the state but outside the existing LEA structure and, crucially, not subject to the cumbersome salary agreements negotiated through teacher unions.
Naturally the education establishment (and their chattering class allies at the BBC and The Guardian) are dead set against it – and their influence should not be under estimated. They did their best to undermine Margaret Thatcher’s attempt to reform them during the 80s mainly because she tried to work within the system and in 1997 they crowed in triumph when the new Labour Government put the education establishment back in the saddle. But now they sense a whiff of danger because Gove is trying to set up an alternative system to compete with them – so the leading teachers union, the NUT, is acting as the spearhead of the status quo by pulling out all the stops to try and push the Free School bus off the road.
One of the classic ploys for any interest group is, of course, the “survey” which always (surprise, surprise) conveniently appears to buttress their own case.
A NUT-commissioned YouGov survey of 1,021 parents in the approved locations found 31% were against setting one up in their area, while 26% were in favour and 29% were neither in favour nor against.
In actual fact, given margins of error, those figures do not seem to indicate strong feelings either way but, of course, it’s the headline not the numbers that stick in the mind and Christine Blower, General Secretary of the NUT gave it both barrels
This survey clearly shows that parents are not clamouring to set up free schools, have no issue with schools being accountable to the community through democratically elected local authorities and absolutely reject the premise of their children’s education being handed over to private companies.
“Free schools are not wanted or needed. They are divisive and unaccountable. The teaching profession and parents know this. It is time the Government stopped playing with the educational future of this country based on nothing more than the fact they can.”
Unfortunately for Ms Blower and her cohorts another set of figures have come out which totally undermines the claim that change is not needed
The UK has more young people without work or education than even Romania and Bulgaria.
Only four of the 27 European Union nations have more poorly educated and unskilled young people.
In just five years, 12 EU countries have overhauled Britain and now have fewer youngsters adrift without qualifications or hope.
Among them are France, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Ireland.
Even the likes of Romania and Bulgaria have now overtaken Britain in terms of their proportion of young men and women with decent education and job chances, the EU research showed.
One reader summed up this disaster perfectly
We should be very angry with what the left dominated teaching establishment has done to our children. Through their dogma and child-centred policies they have managed to produce a semi-literate generation that will fail the next. I could weep.
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