Is Michael Gove a dangerous egomaniac who is ruining UK education?

First topic message reminder :

Our well informed Secretary Of State for Education has decided that as it will soon be the 400th anniversary of the writting of the King James version of the bible every school in England is to have a Celebration copy......
 

It is understood that every school in England will receive a copy of the Bible, which will include a foreword by Education Secretary Michael Gove.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/11/25/michael-gove-puts-bible-every-school_n_1113099.html?ref=uk

 
 
Whilst I can somewhat understand the giving of a copy to every school but why does it have to have foreword by Gove?.....­.Is this just a Tory Minister going on an EGO TRIP/
 
I would ask every Headmaster­/Mistress to remove the pages with the Words of Gove on them......

It was breathtaking to hear that arrogant little Murdoch runt Gove claiming on the R4 ‘Today’ programme yesterday that it was “all Labour’s fault” that there is a shortage of primary school places. As OW says, babies aren’t born at the age of two, so what the hell has the incompetent halfwit been doing for the last three-and-a-quarter years?
 
Answers:-
 
1. Gove scrapped Labour’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme. Enough said.
 
2. Because Gove is so ideologically driven in his hatred of all things public, he’s diverted money from the general fund for state schools into opening free schools, often in areas where schools are not needed.
 
3. As a perfect example of a 'disaster capitalist', he has contrived to downgrade exam results under the guise of "raising standards", so that more schools can be deemed failures and taken out of the state sector. In other words, he's taken his eye off the ball and neglected the most basic requirement of his job - providing enough school places.
 
Before the Tories came to power, Gove said that he would only allow ‘good honours graduates’ to become teachers. Now he's in office, his free schools allow unqualified people to teach. Not only that, a 27-year-old who had previously worked for him is now a head teacher in a free school – without any teaching experience whatsoever. Gove also has no experience of teaching, but he thinks he’s an expert on education. In reality, he's just one of those people (like Hunt) who Cameron has to keep onside - for some inexpicable reason which hopefully will come out in the wash one of these days.

Gove is a typical lounge-bar philosopher, who knows better that all those engaged in the task of educating children. What stupid bullying arseholes these tories all are!

That's really rather witty

When you get back from a holiday, your first priority should always be to rush to the Tory tabloids to see if there are any juicy titbits (regardless of whether they are true or false) which can be used to make a quick and easy attack on Labour. Best not to go to ‘The Daily Mail’ at present, since it’s under even more of a cloud than usual after its disgusting and hypocritical attack on the late Ralph Miliband, so why not try ‘The Daily Express’? Wow, look, just the job, it’s reporting that the OECD (don’t know what that is, but it can’t be anything important to a tabloid reader) has given the English education system a low place in a recent survey. Even better, Tory ministers are saying that “it’s all Labour’s fault”, and they never lie, do they? (They will gladly inform you that for decades, all those pesky Marxist schoolteachers have been ‘dumbing down’ education, refusing to teach children to read and write, while spending all their lessons forcing their pupils to learn and recite all the sayings in Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’.) You can always copy out the tabloid article and pretend that you’ve written it yourself; I don’t suppose anyone will detect a spot of plagiarism, do you?
 
Oh, but wait – as is so often the case, maybe there’s more to this story than suits the bigoted agenda of a crap right-wing paper. Has concern about standards of literacy and numeracy only surfaced in recent years? No, sir! In 1976, PM James Callaghan tried to start a national debate about education because he was concerned about 'informal' methods of teaching (presumably meaning not enough chalk, talk and cane) and a lack of emphasis on ‘the three Rs’. Ever since, we’ve had politicians, most of whom know nothing about education, meddling in the subject instead of allowing teachers to get on with the job of teaching.
 
Contrary to the usual myths and lies, it was the Tories, in the late 1980s, who scrapped O Level examinations and introduced the ‘one size fits all’ GCSE. The national curriculum was introduced by the Education Reform Act of 1988, leading to a narrowing of what was actually taught in schools. SATs (whatever they are – standard assessment or attainment tasks or tests?) were introduced in 1991. Rather like the old ‘payment by results’ system of the late 19th century, pupils tend to be ‘taught to the test’ rather than encouraged to attain their highest level of achievement. The Tories shouldn’t be allowed to escape their share of the blame for the failure of the radical changes which they introduced.
 
This OECD report on English (not Scottish or Welsh) education measures ‘success’ merely in terms of what is useful to business. That’s merely training, there’s a lot more to education than just turning children into human resources. 7% of our children go to private schools, and if the current government of over-promoted misfits is anything to go by, they’re not exactly producing a high standard of education for all the money which parents invest in them. No doubt that’s “all Labour’s fault” as well.
 
A 24-year-old in 2013 would already have been at school under the Tories for the most important four years of their education before the 1997 general election. Unless you’re stupid enough to believe that the entire education system changed on the very day that Labour came to power, then that child would still have been in a Tory-initiated education system for years to come, and so would others who are now 23 or younger.
 
What goes on in the classroom is one of a large range of factors, including poverty, parental education, peer groups and cultural attitudes to education, which affect outcomes. Of course nasty little worms like Michael Gove will pretend that the only determinant of outcomes is schools, when it’s his bloody government’s policies of increasing poverty and inequality which will have a far greater impact on those who graduate from our schools in the foreseeable future.
 
A lot of immigrants have come to this country in the last decade or so (“all Labour’s fault” again), some of them bringing with them children of school age who can’t speak English when they arrive. You can hardly blame the schools and teachers for their failure to reach adequate standards of literacy and numeracy.
 
There’s so much wrong with the overall culture behind our education system, which is designed to produce losers. Only one school can top each league table (something else which the Tories brought in, but which sadly Labour kept) so every other school is a loser. Our upper classes are happy with that; there’s no point in paying for your own children's education to keep out the plebs and then have the state providing something just as good for free. If the plebs get a good education, they might even take over.
 
Do we really need competition in schools? Does it matter if you’re the best in the class, or is it more important that you concentrate on improving on what you’ve achieved previously? The standard Tory philosophy is to sneer at the ‘everyone is a winner’ idea and to argue that the real world is all about competing to destroy your rivals. What we really need is to work in teams, where every member can contribute. What we have is corrosive competition which prevents most kids from reaching their potential.
 
I’m going to quote from a ‘Guardian’ editorial, without pretending that I’ve written this myself:-
 
“It would be rash to assume that Mr Gove's enthusiasm for overhauling governance structures will necessarily do the trick. There is scant evidence, and still less any real theory, as to why this should succeed where every previous bright idea has failed.

A more solid approach would start by asking which pupils are falling behind: the OECD found that the link between less-educated homes and pupil's educational problems was almost twice as strong in England as in some other countries. Various targeted interventions had just started to erode the old cast-iron link between social class and classroom performance by the time Labour lost power, and the Liberal Democrats' valuable, if overhyped, pupil premium should allow further progress.

The difficulty, however, is that child poverty is about to rocket, owing chiefly to benefit cutbacks. Every teacher knows that the way things are going at home has a bearing on concentration in the classroom. For a third of a century, England's poor communities have been left behind, and among other things the OECD has captured some of the consequences. Of course it is what goes on in the classroom that matters, but that depends on life beyond school walls as much as any Whitehall wheeze.”
 
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/08/education-england-oecd-report?utm_content=buffer3791b&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer&commentpage=1
 
Schools lay the foundation for adult literacy and numeracy, but that OECD report argues that skills will waste away if young people don’t continue to use them after they leave school. An economy which combines a high level of youth unemployment, currently one million, with an increasing proportion of casualised, low-skilled jobs, provides a poor environment for many young adults to maintain and develop high levels of literacy and numeracy. Still never mind, the UK has had three decades of market forces, but our Tory tabloids and our so-called leaders are still blaming Marxism for everything. Perhaps it’s “all Ralph Miliband’s fault”? If either ‘The Daily Mail’ or ‘The Daily Express’ ever tell us that, we’ll know it’s correct because we're so thick that we accept everything they print, don't we?

Old adage: Nothing succeeds like success. Anecdotal evidence suggests that children do better at school when their home background encourages study and provides a satisfactory environment in which to do so.

Lazy parents who leave everything to the Teachers have effectively abandoned their kids to the malevolent Gove's intentions.

My apologies for not furnishing the link to the Express (a mistake) Ivan. I don't plagiarise and I don't need my wrist slapped continuously. Ever answered my last message to yourself Ivan? Thought not!

Was that whole post for me Ivan, very impressive. I can only assume you've never been in a position of having to try and employ these kids without firstly teaching them the basics of English and Maths. Are the teachers at fault (can't be they all read the Guardian), are the employers at fault (must be they have money). Ask yourself in what order the kids are passed through the system and bin those glasses son.

Should "Cutting Edge" incorporate a complaints thread wherein to record personal animus towards perceived authority-figures?

Personal tizzies rarely contribute much to general debate.

Some Sage. if you tug your forelock to any you perceive superior OW, such niggly habits and so easy to pull apart a valid view whilst offering no alternative.

The reality is education has been failing children since comprehensives came into being and no government prior to this coalition has dared attempt to change it.

There may indeed be problems with the education system - I'm not sure a lot of amateurish, ideology driven tinkering by someone who doesn't know the first thing about education is going to fix them.

Perhaps if you have some ideas of what would be an improvement, you would care to share them?

Is this a picture of a man who was bullied at school?



And , if not, why wasn't he...?    

I imagine any right thinking boy would not have been able to resist at the very least a Chinese burn or two

oftenwrong wrote:-
Should "Cutting Edge" incorporate a complaints thread wherein to record personal animus towards perceived authority-figures?

 
Most certainly not. The procedure for anyone who has a grievance is to send it by personal message to one of the administrators:-
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/t18-posting-rules
 
Very few members make complaints, only a tiny minority who are either unable or unwilling to abide by the rules of a forum which they chose to join. Invariably, such complainants like to pretend that any sanctions imposed on them are not the result of their conduct but because of their political views.
 
If you have any further suggestions, please post them here:-
https://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/f22-suggestions

tlttf wrote:-
Was that whole post for me Ivan, very impressive.

 
Don’t flatter yourself. That post was designed to show the “reality” (your latest buzzword) that there is a lot more behind the OECD report on education in the UK than your grubby little snippet from ‘The Daily Express’ and the traditional chant of “it’s all Labour’s fault” offered us. As the post was longer than four or five lines, it was probably too much for you to grasp, as no doubt this one will be.
 

I can only assume you've never been in a position of having to try and employ these kids without firstly teaching them the basics of English and Maths.

 
I hope you’re not saying that you’ve ever taught children English? Perish the thought. Your own spelling and comprehension often leave a lot to be desired, and you can’t even distinguish between singular and plural – “The problem with immigrants arriving at present are basically…….”
 

I don't need my wrist slapped continuously.

 
If you break the forum rules repeatedly, then I’m afraid you do. Expect it to happen when you post messages which consist entirely of personal insults and have no content relevant to the thread subject.
 

Ever answered my last message to yourself Ivan? Thought not!

 
No I haven't, and I sent you an email on 16 August saying that I wouldn’t answer any more. You don’t take any notice of my answers, and I’ve spent more time dealing with your violations than those of all the other members of the forum put together. How strange that you don’t like your messages being ignored yet you’ve called me a troll when I’ve answered your posts! If you have any more complaints, put them in a personal message and I'll be pleased to ignore them. You used up all my goodwill some time ago, so either stick to the rules or expect sanctions.
 

The reality is education has been failing children since comprehensives came into being and no government prior to this coalition has dared attempt to change it.

 
Ah, so you’re supporting this ‘coalition’ (i.e. right-wing Tory government) today, but yesterday it was:-
 

The present bunch of public ponces (coalition)

 
Why don’t you win yourself a modicum of credibility by supporting your sweeping statements like with a few facts and reasoned arguments, or aren’t you capable of doing so? Maybe you could answer a few of the questions which it implied:-
 
- Why do you consider comprehensive schools inherently bad?
 
- Did making a judgement on children at the age of 11 fail the 80% of them who were sent to secondary modern schools?
 
- Which education secretary (who later went on to become PM) abolished the greatest number of grammar schools?
 
- How does Gove’s policy of opening free schools, often in areas where schools are not needed, out of democratic control and where about 10% of the teachers are unqualified, improve our education system?
 

son.

 
I’m extremely pleased that I’m not your son, a pathetic insult which you’ve posted at least three times now. If I had been your son, I’d have no doubt grown up ignorant, incapable of looking at the “reality” behind glib and pernicious Tory tabloid headlines, and having scant regard for the rest of the population. You’re not half the man that my late father was, and to imply, however facetiously, that you’re him, is grossly offensive. Just because ‘The Daily Mail’ is not averse to using parentage in its attempts to demean an opponent, there’s no need for sycophantic readers of that trash to do likewise.

Dear, dear another tizzy highlighting previous school failings. Unable to debate without insult is a guarantee of failed education.

Never taught kids Ivan, I have ran a project and lectured at an organisation aimed at teaching NVQ4 management to the unemployed (wanting to work). I only allowed 1:6 a place as the other 5 were simply hoping for a bluff day comprised of playing computer games (anything to allow them to continue claiming), the youngest allowed was 25, all had previous work history, all got jobs due to the set up I put into place. So yes I have experience.

What's your background?

I have ran a project
The correct wording would be 'I have RUN a project' - it's not fabulous grammar even so, but is at least correct use of English.

Now, to return to the topic;


Perhaps if you have some ideas of what would be an improvement, you would care to share them?.



Personally, I've had enough of the bitching

Every government training initiative attracts a school of pilot-fish "instructors" who tailor a course precisely measured to the fees available. Rather like those schoolteachers who don't so much teach the subject as show how to pass an exam in that subject.

As a teacher, Gove's changes continue to disrupt lesson plans and Schemes of Work. It's very annoying.

tlttf wrote:Some Sage. if you tug your forelock to any you perceive superior OW, such niggly habits and so easy to pull apart a valid view whilst offering no alternative.

The reality is education has been failing children since comprehensives came into being and no government prior to this coalition has dared attempt to change it

They may have indeed tried to change it, but not all change is for the better.   In establishing the free schools, they have set up a system that is answerable only to Gove himself, regardless of the fact that he has no experience in Education.   State schools have now removed the likes of Music, P.E Art from the curriculum so if the child is not academic, effectively they have no educational avenue to pursue after school, which then in turn will have an effect on universities.   Academies have been sidelining pupils onto colleges, who are not performing or achieving because they are trying to protect their results table at the end of the year.  If fixing results within market research is considered illegal, so as not to provide  biased data, why then is this considered ok?  There is a distinct air of Elitist snobbery hidden behind a veil of good intentions with how the education sector has been dealt with, more children will slip through the cracks of the education department not less, but that seems to be a price worth paying to Gove

On a slightly lighter note

Deadly,
What you say rings true.
And thanks for the really entertaining clip

Deadly Nighshade Great post and great entertainment to boot, Gove thinks he is the bees knees when it come to education I think he has too many people around about him telling him "Every kind of Tory Lie" there is in there book of Tory Ideology.

Or the fact they want to privatize our hard fought for education system, so that only people at the top with wealth and title to there name will be able to educate there kids, this proves they want to roll back the clock to one of Charles Dickens dark and shameful stories.

With the amount of people this RAT A**ED gov't has hurt and made to suffer do you really think the majority of the good people are going to vote Tory or the Orange book Tories, if you think that 13 years was a long time out of power the next time the Tories get back in will bethe TWELTH of NEVER  

Redflag & boatlady, glad that you both enjoyed it. I know it's a total pipe dream but would it be too difficult for them to just lay out what they really intended to do? Instead of insulting us and presuming that we either wont see through their nonsense, or even better sit back and take it.

Gove should be considered toxic with the amount of mistakes he has made over the "shake up/fuster cluck" Yet he still remains in a position to do even further damage. What I am unclear of and hopefully someone could at least offer some form of analysis as to what can be done to resolve this mess apart from removing Gove, but how much damage has already been done?

I really try not to think too hard about the damage that has already been done.
 
It seems to me, we're heading to a situation like the one this country had at the beginning of the 1914 -1918 war, when a large proportion of working class men presenting to enlist in the armed forces were found to be unfit for combat, due to bad living conditions, brutal working conditions, inadequate and insufficient food, and lack of medical treatment for common illnesses. I think it was more than half the working class.
 
If you look at statistics about body size and shape, you can see we are significantly larger, taller and more fleshy than our forbears at the beginning of the 20th Century - because we have a better diet, better public health and access to health care, better working conditions and better housing.
 
Current government policy seems focussed on denying decent housing for all but those who can afford to buy, or pay inflated rents; working conditions are becoming worse, with zero hours contracts, work paid at less than the minimum wage (e.g. home carers not paid for travel time, which can account for an hour or more in the working day), erosion of employment rights, which can drive people to accept dangerous conditions and unsafe working practices in order to retain employment. And I'm not even going to mention food banks - I have so much to say about them that it would take all night.
 
I could go on, but it's too depressing - I think we need a proper reforming socialist government like the one we had in the late 1940's, that will nationalise utilities, transport and telecommunications, take the NHS and Royal Mail back into public ownership, close the faith schools, the academies the free schools and the private schools and institute a national curriculum that would give every child a fair chance to gain an excellent education and work towards her/his potential. I think we need a proper system of social security that will provide a substantial safety net for citizens whose lives have hit the rails, and access to higher education for anyone who can demonstrate the ability to undertake advanced study.

I don't suppose you fancy standing at the next G.E do you boatlady?  You would most definitely get my vote.   Clear outline of how/what people should have/require from a Government and it's provided, Puts Cameron's farce clear and centre and makes him worthy of a kick in the nuts...

The problems created by Michael Gove result from his pursuit of two different goals simultaneously. He wants to reform Education and he also wants to be Tory Party Leader.

I don't suppose you fancy standing at the next G.E do you boatlady?

Sadly, I expect I've radically oversimplified everything - I imagine when anyone gets into government they find there are all sorts of reasons why the obviously right thing can't be managed just yet.

".... I imagine when anyone gets into government they find there are all sorts of reasons why the obviously right thing can't be managed...."

I think it was Jimmy Carter, the Peanut President, who explained that once he had been sworn-in, the White House officials showed him the REAL figures, which stopped his reform plan in its tracks.

There's so much we, the electorate, aren't allowed to know

Knowledge is Power. (Francis Bacon)
This lot wouldn't share a joke.

Former Tory education secretary attacks Michael Gove
 
Lord Kenneth Baker, who served under Thatcher, has said:-
 
"Michael Gove is a very dominant education secretary whose policies are entirely derived from his own educational experience. Michael Gove had a tough upbringing, and he believes if he did it, anybody in the country could do what he did – whether they're orphans, whether they're poor, whether they're impoverished, they can all rise to the top. Well, that is not actually true, and that is dominating the attitude of a key minister in government."
 
For the full story:-
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/24/kenneth-baker-attacks-michael-gove?

Saw that this morning - I guess it explains a lot about why he is acting in the irresponsible way he is - and possibly highlights some problems with the way education is in general tackled at ministerial level - maybe a new government should think about appointing an Education minister who has actually done a few years teaching - and advisors who have worked in education at a senior level

boatlady wrote:-
maybe a new government should think about appointing an education minister who has actually done a few years teaching

 
Tony Blair did just that in 2001, when Estelle Morris, a former teacher, was appointed education secretary. Sadly she felt she wasn’t up to the job and, unusually for a politician, she admitted as much and resigned the following year. Can you imagine the arrogant creep Gove, who must rank as one of the worst education secretaries ever (despite strong competition from Keith Joseph and John Patten, the latter being successfully sued after describing the Birmingham education chief as "a madman ... wandering the streets, frightening the children”) admitting his gross incompetence?
 
The problem is that because most people have children and everyone went to school, an awful lot of people think they’re experts on education. This attitude is being reinforced by Gove, who seems to think that anyone can be a teacher, even if they have no qualifications. He can’t see the obvious contradiction in his dogma: he claims that free schools provide a better education, and yet free schools don’t have to follow the national curriculum or have qualified teachers, both of which are the responsibility of the government!
 

I guess part of the problem may be that there isn't in fact a consensus about the uses and purpose of education - what a well educated person might look like, and how they might contribute to the human capital of the society they live in.
 
This allows for the development of numerous 'models' of education - if you can't agree on what output you're looking for, you obviously won't be able to agree on how to achieve it - and this is the rather chaotic situation Gove has been able to exploit (and he hasn't been the first)
 
To my mind, what we need is State education across the board - close down the private schools, set a universal standard for educational excellence, based on research findings from around the world, and then deliver that model across the board.
 
If in the course of time it begins to seem that some aspects of the educational model are not serving the interests of children and the communities they live in, then managed, evidence based amendments can be made.
 
I'm NOT any kind of expert on education, but any idiot can see that a 'mixed economy' of education of the sort that's currently being peddled will only serve to advantage some children and neighbourhoods at the expense of others - and I don't see how that can ever be a good thing.

It's only necessary to give children the skills necessary for them to be self-supporting in adulthood.

It ain't Rocket Science.

Ah, but what are those skills?
Personally, I've seen them change in my lifetime - the skillset I left school with wouldn't necessarily get me a job today - and I guess you need a job to be self supporting - unless you inherit wealth

I'm sick of the changes ... they just add each time. Now, let's scrap the grades and bring in numbers. What next?

Just ask Boris. Mr Gove wants to lead the Tory Party. An essential preliminary is to contrive frequent mentions in the media.

oftenwrong wrote:  Just ask Boris.  Mr Gove wants to lead the Tory Party.  An essential preliminary is to contrive frequent mentions in the media.

And to hell with the children his incompetent footle destroy meanwhile!