Gove

[Ted Max]

Michael Gove...

It's got nothing to do with how he looks and talks, the exes fiddling, or even the awarding of the uncontested 500k contract to the 25 yr old former adviser.

It's not the curious approach to reducing the "tyranny" of targets and tests by, er, increasing targets and introducing more tests. Or to increasing schools' "freedom" by expanding central control.

It's the fact that he has the gall to pretend that what he is about is extending the education he benefited from ? diverse, classically-driven, expansive and explorative - to all, when all the evidence he himself is providing proves the exact opposite.

It's the fact that he thinks that if he blows piercing blasts on the dog whistle of squaddies in schools, a return to discipline and "Free" schools, then we won't notice the the ideologically-bound fostering of a private sector land grab in education provision and its damaging fetishisation of the production of multiply tested, targeted and lobotimised drones that were once called children.

He may be looking us in the eye but he's pissing on our shoes, and he thinks that we think that he's giving us a foot bath...

[Loz]

All good points, Ted, but I think the bit about "multiply tested, targeted and lobotimised drones that were once called children" (well, at least the first two) has to be laid at the door of the previous government. It's something couldn't be put into a published league list, Blair/Brown somehow made it so it could.

[Ted Max]

Oh yes. Undoubtedly. They can f*ck off too (and have done so).

[david_carnell]

Whilst I agree to an extent, it's a little chicken and egg here.

The desire to test and tabulate children and schools, and to therefore determine rank, is as much driven by aspirational parents (who simply have to know that the school that little Toby will be going to is top of the pile locally) as it is by oleaginous politicians looking to score points.

[felt-tip]

good word.

[TonyQuinn]

Oh come on, it is about the way he looks and talks......

[david_carnell]

Michael Gove

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39399000/jpg/_39399648_tory_boy203.jpg

Tory Boy

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/03_01/GoveDM0603_228x326.jpg

[RosieH]

He's got to keep the breeders' offspring separate from the unfortunate middle classes though, innit?

[felt-tip]

That is one seriously punchable face.

[Marmora Man]

The Tory Boy caricature misses a whole lot of Michael Gove's background.

Adopted at 4 months by a fishmonger and his teaching assistant wife MG was initially educated in the state system, only moving out of it by virtue of being bright enough to win a scholarship to a local public school - he and his family no doubt following the good Scottish tradition of revering education. As a journo he was a Labour supporting striker. Not sure when or what prompted his Damascene conversion to conservative sense but to pillory him as a member of the elite classes is both ill informed and pointless.

[Ted Max]

I'm emphatically not interested in his background.

How's the "let's all wait for caring olf IDS, Centre for Social Justice" thing working out? I hear bus tickets from Merthyr to Cardiff are a snip, and the roads they drive down are going to be sparkling clean.

[Huguenot]

So do teachers not think they should be measured at all?

How cruel a world that, where the judges refused to be judged?

If teachers do accept some sort of meritocracy, on what criteria should it be set? Please be specfic, citing your sources. You have 60 minutes.

[Ted Max]

http://joanmcalpine.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8346160e669e20133f4f7101f970b-800wi

[nashoi]

Tony Blair reached a particular low point in my estimation when, in an interview with Paxman, he refused to condemn the teaching of creationism in a school in the North East. All he kept saying in response was that the school was doing very well in the league tables. So that's all right then. Difficult to imagine Gove being any more enlightened. Faith schools under Labour, MacSchools staffed by squaddies and bankers under the Tories, difficult to decide which is worse.

['bout now]

If he's a Fishmonger's son then surely he should know his Plaice?

I'll er get me coat.

[Ted Max]

"You're a fishmonger you say, Mr Gove? We've got just the bairn for ye."

(Sorry)