The right-wing Centre for Policy Studies emerged from the shadows when Tory home affairs spokesman Chris Grayling revealed his reactionary views on gay couples in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. But the CPS has a long history as the think-tank where Tories can discuss their real views without pretending to be centrists.
Michael Gove gave a speech to the CPS last November in which he outlined his proposals for education. He attacked Labour for failing children who receive free school meals, few of whom go on to university. This captured headlines and caught Labour off balance – because it is true. This allowed the Tories to pose as defenders of social mobility. It was a smart move on Gove’s part, but the rest of the speech was rather less concerned with the rights of the poor. He said nothing about redressing poverty and little on how the Tories would address the “corroded academic standards” which have developed over the past 20 years. Instead he spent most of his speech developing themes dear to the Tory hard right. He wants to boost academies and extend free-market deregulation – policies which would seriously damage social cohesion.
After 13 years of this Labour Government, no one would pretend that ours is an ideal society. But it is not broken. David Cameron and Michael Gove are proposing measures that would further weaken the role of schools, thus damaging social cohesion. It is Tory policy to put a rocket under the academy programme. In a subsequent statement, Gove identified 150 schools that the Tories would turn into academies straight away, if they win power. He is intent on a revolution in education.
Gove broke with the Westminster consensus by announcing that successful schools would become academies with immediate effect. This deviates from the approach going back to Kenneth Baker’s days as Education Secretary, whereby the role of academies has been to replace failing schools and help the disadvantaged. Letting successful schools opt-out straight away is a recipe for social division.
This would be made worse under Tory plans to allow schools to control their own admissions and exclusions – which creates selection. Added to this, the Tories propose the abolition of national terms of pay and conditions, so the wealthiest schools could pay some teachers over the odds (awarding bonuses in addition). The outcome would be inevitable. Schools would be divided into rich and poor.
Gove’s model is the “independent” school, able to control its own curriculum and hours, lengthening the school day and imposing Saturday classes. His plans for the national curriculum, introduced under Baker, are unclear. Gove’s statement that schools would spend money on pupils which would otherwise be spent by local councils shows how out of touch he is. Under the Local Management of Schools scheme, schools already control their budgets and buy in council or other services.
Gove has outlined the first year’s education priorities of a Tory government and the philosophy underlining it. This is curiously reminiscent of the old Stalinist view of model collective farms and disciplined factories, with “anti-bureaucracy” replacing “planning” as the mantra. Gove regards schools as examination factories and endorses the charter school movement in the United States. This has been severely criticised for widening the racial divide in American cities.
It is telling that, in the course of a long speech to the CFS, Gove never mentioned students not in education, employment or training – NEETs. Yet there are nearly
a million of these young people, showing that Government education policy is alienating vast numbers. Gove’s factory farm methods would make things worse.
Some of his proposals are not just reactionary, but truly bizarre. Gove wants to hand the examination system over to employers and universities, but only to run A-levels and vocational subjects. What about GCSEs and SATs?
Gove is playing to the concerns of universities (over poor A-levels) and employers (over poor vocational education). The concerns of the public seem to be secondary.
No matter how the Gove revolution may play in right-wing newspapers, it is dangerous. He is obsessed with bureaucracy, particularly in local authorities, although their influence is much diminished these days. But Gove is convinced they hold up the rapid growth of academies and so he calls for the removal of “the red tape which bureaucrats use to stop new schools, from planning laws to building regulations”.
This ignores the fact that the numbers of those in school are in decline and new school buildings are expensive, particularly in a recession. What kind of thinking wants schools to be exempt from planning laws and building regulations? These are designed to make sure buildings are safe and do not collapse on those inside them – as can happen in poor countries. But British schools are well built. They do not fall down. In his haste for a permanent revolution in school provision, does Gove really want cowboy builders constructing cheap, nasty and hazardous premises?
Gove spoke from the heart to the hardest of the Tory hard-right think-tanks. He revealed what lies at the core of David Cameron’s Conservative Party. Yes, things could be better after 13 years of Labour. However, if Gove and his colleagues get their way, the rhetoric of a broken society could well become a reality.
