The departure of Michael Gove from the Department for Education this week has thrown the spotlight on how much progress he has made in the past four years, and whether this change in personnel will herald a change in policy, however subtle. As Philip Collins argues in The Times today, it is difficult to see how there will not be at least some slide under Nicky Morgan.
Gove can point to plenty of things he can be proud of from his tenure as Education Secretary. Toby Young, one of his most ardent supporters, has provided something of a definitive list. Most important structurally has been the expansion of the academies programme and the introduction of free schools. Whatever the teething problems, giving schools greater autonomy from local authorities will be a good thing in the long run.
But Gove’s biggest contribution has been to challenge attitudes in the education establishment and take on so many of the tired old clichés that are holding children back. This manifested itself in his rewriting of the National Curriculum and his repeated stress on academic rigour and – yes – facts. Knowledge, and cultural literacy, have been ignored in the state sector for too long, putting millions upon millions of children at an immediate disadvantage in life. His mission was tied to what was another new one on too many people in the teaching world: the belief that a child’s social background does not have to dictate their academic potential.
But while Gove did so much to start this revolution, it is not yet complete. Nicky Morgan, I’m sure, will try to see it through. Should Labour win power next year, I don’t imagine Tristram Hunt would roll back the years quite as much as many teachers are hoping. But this isn’t a simple matter of who is in charge at the top – it’s about shaking up the whole system, where a misguided worldview has taken hold over several decades.
With perfect (if unintended) timing, my colleague Robert Peal has a new research paper out today demonstrating precisely the kind of thing Gove was, and Morgan now is, up against. Ofsted inspectors, warned by the Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw not to make judgements on style of teaching, repeatedly doing just that. They are penalising traditional, teacher-led lessons because they favour a “jazzy” style of group work and “child-centred” learning that is entirely unproven and highly dubious. (For the details, you can download the paper, ‘Playing the Game: The enduring influence of the preferred Ofsted teaching style’, here).
The irony here is that Sir Michael is himself no fan of this trendy teaching, or what he uncharitably calls the “Lefty, hippy types”. But he is maintaining the pretence that he has dealt with it. He told a conference recently that he had rooted out any inspectors like this who did not agree with him. Our evidence suggests otherwise. Yet the response from Ofsted today is that the arguments in our report are “largely re-heated”. This is true: they have been going around for years, and are still going around, for the very reason that Ofsted has not dealt with the problem.
This is but one example of the battle facing successive education secretaries. Nicky Morgan, good luck.
