Education Secretary Michael Gove has unveiled “rigorous selection” tests for trainee teachers in a move he claims will improve the status of the profession and raise standards in the classroom. It’s a pity his own approach to policymaking doesn’t live up to the same standards he’s asking of teachers.
Announcing the policy, Michael Gove said: “The evidence from around the world is clear – rigorous selection of trainee teachers is key to raising the quality and standing of the teaching profession.”Despite an apparent inconsistency with previous announcements – in July Gove declared that, like their private counterparts and free schools, academies in England could employ people who are not working towards qualified teacher status (QTS) – at least this policy was based on evidence and developed by a review group of headteachers and education experts. For many of his other reforms, Michael Gove seems to make policy in secret, ignore what teachers and other experts think, and go against the best available evidence.
For example:
- Provoking two members of the expert panel recruited to redraft the English primary curriculum to resign; one of them, Andrew Pollard, criticized Gove’s plans for undermining teachers’ professional judgment;
- Repeatedly overruling another expert panel established to advise on selling off school playing fields;
- According to the Deputy Prime Minister, not even telling Number 10 of his plans to scrap GCSEs in favour of the so-called English baccalaureate (EBacc), which less than one in four teachers support, which has been developed without any meaningful input from teachers, parents or young people, and which is unlikely to be properly piloted before being introduced;
- Ignoring that, alongside its academic rigour, the main characteristic of the International Baccalaureate is its inclusion of practical and vocational elements – much like the GCSE dismissed by Gove as ‘dumbed down’;
- Dismissing concerns that a stronger emphasis on exams as opposed to coursework could exclude young people with learning difficulties such as dyslexia;
- Extending academies despite government data showing that local authority schools with a similar pupil intake perform better, without any evaluation of the possible impact on the already highly segregated education system, further divorcing schools from local democratic control and effectively centralising a major tranche of government spending with minimum parliamentary accountability;
- Scrapping the Building Schools of the Future programme because there is ‘no evidence’ that it helps to improve attainment – even though his department knows there is;
- Accepting the lack of transparency of academies and free schools, and awarding half a million pounds of public money to the Free Schools Network (which is not subject to freedom of information requests) to promote his £600 million untested flagship project;
- Abolishing the Educational Maintenance Allowance despite independent evaluations finding that it significantly increased staying-on rates and attainment for young people in education;
- Using secret emails to bypass even his own departmental officials (using the alias ‘Mrs Blurt’);
- Turning a blind eye to his department’s generally poor record on freedom of information and lack of transparency on who actually runs schools and what their status is.
Michael Gove’s colleagues have committed the Government to open policy making as well as open government. The Civil Service Reform White Paper published in June 2012 contained a commitment announced that: “Open policy making will become the default. Whitehall does not have a monopoly on policy making expertise. We will establish a clear model of open policy making.” Our project with The Democratic Society is currently examining how open policy making can be made a reality.
The Government has also promoted the evidence agenda, and is considering the case for new institutions that would perform an advisory role similar to the role that NICE plays for the NHS and the Early Intervention Foundation does for early years, to help ensure commissioners in central or local government do not waste time and money on programmes that are unlikely to be effective.
No-one seems to have told Michael Gove about either of these initiatives. No wonder teachers are starting to make their own education policy.
[...] ministers’ determinedly closed approach to policymaking - most notably Michael Gove. [...]