You cannot fail to have noticed that many schools in the country are a bit annoyed at the moment due to "raising of standards" according to Ofqual/Department of Education, or "moving the goalposts without telling anyone" according to everyone else involving GCSE English results.
Michael Gove and anyone else from the DfE have been uncharacteristically quiet during the entire incident, partly due to the fact that they are on holiday and partly because whatever they say, they can't really win because what has happened is so totally appalling that there is no defense. There won't be a single educator in the land that doesn't agree that standards need to be raised as far as exams are concerned because the general public, or employers more specifically, have lost faith in them. Gove actually has a point that we can't expect pass rates to continue going up forever. If that were the case then why not just put all the targets to 100% pass, which would be equally pointless.
I read a great piece written by a teacher saying that exams are designed to discriminate (not a popular word in society nowadays), to show who is good academically and who is not. If everyone passes the exams, then exams are pointless - failure can be a positive thing at times, a fact that has been neglected in recent times. The trouble is that Ofqual or the exam boards (whoever you choose to believe) decided to raise the pass mark without telling anyone, which is even worse when the teacher marks the "work" and therefore knows what grade each child should have got with whatever mark scheme you are using. The plain fact of the matter is that students got different grades for the same quality work depending upon when they were entered for the exam, and that is patently unfair.
Gove maintains that he has never direct contact with Ofqual, but frankly he doesn't need to. His "contact" with Ofqual is via the press. Gove is not shy of the press (apart from at the moment) and has repeatedly stated his desire to raise standards, with the baseline for schools now being 40% of pupils achieving 5 A*-C grades including English and Maths. If a school drops below that magical 40% (which will go up again soon) then they face being taken over by the DfE and forced in to being an academy - another of Gove's educational wishes.
What I find sinister about the whole episode is that everything that has happened has been purely for political reasons, at the expense of the futures of thousands of youngsters. It has also been designed to force schools into academisation, against their wishes, but in line with current government policy of what conspiracy theorists would call the privatisation of state education. The constant denials from both Gove, the DfE and Ofqual only highlight what people in power think of their subjects; they think were are too stupid to understand.
What Gove needs to do is re-grade (no need for expensive and time-consuming remarking) all the English papers (and I'd be surprised if this was limited to English alone, it's just more obvious in the English exam as the teacher know the marks and boundaries) and then make up a totally new qualification that is more difficult to pass. Don't call it the iGCSE or the O Level, call it something totally new and make every school (state or private) take the same one. Gove is right that currently standards aren't high enough but the way he's forcing this policy through, either directly or indirectly, is underhand at best.
You do get the impression that he's going to get his own way on education policy by hook or by crook, whether it's for the best or not. The trouble is that the teaching profession (even those who were on his side before the exam grade fiasco) are now unconvinced by the man, and that can only be a bad thing for his future political career - I've got my fingers crossed anyway.
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