Britain’s Education Minister Michael Gove has come under fire this week for his proposals that would increase the amount of time that schools in Britain are open to ten hours per day in order to address failing standards amongst students.
Born in Scotland and working first as a journalist before being elected to parliament in 2005, Gove’s tenure in parliamentary education circles has been renowned for originality; whether they’ve been good ideas is another thing altogether.
When Mr. Gove talks about education plans he has two things going against him. One is the obvious detachment he has from the everyday person – not in his personality style but in that his ideas are sometimes detached and unrealistic. Second is that, through no fault of his own, he comes across as the classical prototypical Tory toff – the kind of private school snob that just turns off a lot of voters.
The motivation for extending the school day from 6 ½ hours or so to 9-10 is three-fold. One is to boost school standards via more instruction. The second is to advance cultural education by providing more opportunities to participate in such activities as Orchestra, Debate Team, Sports & Drama. The third is to set up homework sessions primarily to help children from homes where education is a low priority.
Advancing the cultural and extra-curricular activities is fine, these things have a place in the educational system where children should be exposed to applying the various talents that might lie within them and be encouraged to pursue that which they are good at. But the hidden agenda in the longer school day is essentially low-cost childcare, and that allows the state to assume responsibility from parents which results in less-engaged parenting.
The Channel 4 exposé Educating Yorkshire and the BBC reality show Tough Young Teachers show what some state schools are up against – and we wonder how exactly this Michael Gove miracle is to be effected. As Anna Maxted in the Daily Telegraph puts it “even the most brilliant, dedicated teachers struggle with children who see no value in learning. The best teachers aren’t merely teaching a syllabus; they are parenting, offering emotional and moral guidance.”
It is the kind of observation by Maxwell that Gove frequently fails to connect with. When saying that teachers need to be empowered with more disciplinary powers it’s not that he’s wrong, it’s that he sounds like he’s shooting in the dark with an air gun knowing only that the target is within ninety degrees of where he is aiming. There is no conviction of understanding beyond generality.
Gove also wants the age of admission to schools lowered, by-passing Nursery (pre-school ) systems. This combination has drawn criticism from the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) who passed a vote of no confidence in Gove last year, the first time the organization has done that to a sitting Education Secretary.
Russell Hobby, General Secretary of NAHT, likes the chance to work more with disadvantaged children but not at an earlier age. He said “people are rightly afraid of very young children in very institutional environments being taught traditional lessons. Two-year-olds learn through play and experience. Nurseries can be very cheerful and nurturing, but people rightly fear a more institutionalised academic approach.”
Gove also came under fire for essentially sacking Labour peer Baroness Morgan of Huyton (head of the school inspections watchdog), intending to replace her with Conservative donor and private equity boss Theodore Agnew. One can understand wanting someone with a more similar ideology but Morgan was considered to have done a good non-partisan job and her replacement is someone with no education background. It might prove to be a good move but in politics optics count and this looks like politicising education.
One of the Education Secretary’s ideas this week was to propose that State run schools could be run as well as private ones. If that is true, why would private schools exist? As one retired teacher put it this will never happen because of “resources available, attitude of parents to education and support shown to teachers and above all, class size, (the) Department of Education has always been putting forward whacky ideas for class teachers, mainly by ministers with no experience of life in the classroom.”
Gove has had successes! The implementation of ‘free schools’ (Charter schools in the US & Canada) where governance is removed from the local authority and passed down to the school itself and its own parents and teachers. Throughout the world similar systems have boosted performance significantly.
Similarly the Education Secretary has looked at plans in other western countries that have already yielded results such as the Swedish style voucher system which allows parents to take the cost of state education and apply it to a private school. Competition works and raises standards for everybody.
For the purists there is little doubt about Gove’s ideological convictions as a Christian, a conservative, and a defender of Israel. Likewise he has spoken and written unashamedly on the evils of militant Islam. Indeed the left-wing British Pakistani Tariq Ali once said of him he "debat[ed] the ghastly Gove on television [… and found him] worse than most Bush apologists in the United States." That attack alone will win him plaudits from the right.
But for Gove to be more successful he will have to be more credible. He does OK with the big picture but not the implementation. Credibility will only come from spending time at the heart of the problems he proposes solutions for, and spending it with the people that face them. Only then will he stop sounding like the detached person in a distant corporate office and more like someone who has experienced and understood that which he intends to create legislation and policy about.
