Gove Under Pressure

Well if he's not, he should be. The current list of gripes and headaches facing the Secretary of State for Education is a long one:

1. That pesky GCSE English fiasco has been joined by a GCSE Science fiasco (and will eventually be joined by other subjects I suspect). A legal challenge has been mounted by schools and students and is gathering pace. Ofqual is predictably saying that they are not budging and the pressure on Gove to step in is growing. He's keeping a stiff upper lip and currently sitting on his hands, despressingly predictably.
2. Various experts are stating that Gove's changes to the exam system are being bundled through too quickly, including his own colleagues on the Education Select Committee and Glenys Stacey, the Head of Ofqual, who frankly should be getting her own house in order before commenting on other people's. If your allies are telling you that you may need to slow down, maybe you should listen, but no, not our Mikey.
3. Sir Michael Wilshaw, Gove's pal and Head of Ofsted, has been shooting his mouth off again, saying that teachers shouldn't get pay rises if they don't put the hours in. I don't think anyone would argue with the sentiment, but the tone and phraseology of the man leave a lot to be desired. This seems to be a common theme in Wilshaw's life, where he only appears to open his mouth to change feet.
4. The two biggest teaching unions have started their "action short of strike action" this week, with rumours in our local area that a couple of academy heads have threatened staff with punishment if they choose to adopt the policy. Not a great advert for staff, or indeed a great morale booster for already low-esteemed teachers. Academy freedoms may work well for the headteachers of those schools, but stories of staff being essentially bullied and threatened in them, and the fact that these academies have an extremely high staff turnover, would suggest that the benefits for ordinary teachers are limited at best.
5. An academy has been accused of doctoring students' exams to increase grades, and even worse, it's an academy that was highlighted by the Conservatives due to their improved results - no wonder, the teachers were apparently doing the exams for them! The anti-academy issue won't go away and these sorts of headlines are not helping. The money has dried up and the benefits are rapidly disappearing. Claims that academies are performing better in exams are baseless, not helped with this news of possible cheating.

Knowing our Michael, he will be blissfully unaware of any issues in education or with the teaching profession as he revs up his policy steamroller. What Gove has done to education in two and a bit years has been remarkable, but mainly in a bad way. Teachers were pretty demoralised before he stepped into the role, but now, having overseen an exodus of 10,000 teachers in the last 12 months, teaching is at an all time low in my experience of over ten years in the game - recruiting new staff is not always the answer due to them needing time to find their feet in the classroom. I was talking to a former colleague of mine who is leaving his school, along with another teacher, purely because they can't stand it any more. Neither member of staff has a job to go to - surely this has to set off alarm bells, doesn't it? Couple that with a Head of Ofsted who seems hellbent on winding the profession up and making their lives a misery, the recipe is not a tasty one!

I think it would be fair to say that education in this country needed some change, but the underhand way in which Gove has gone about his business, alongside Ofsted and Ofqual leaves a nasty taste in the mouth if you are a teacher. It's all well and good to have ideas of the way to move something, in this case education, forward, but wouldn't it be sense to seek advice and support from "experts", or at the very least, those who will have to face the consequences of the changes proposed. Seemingly not.

Gove may have achieved his goal by the time he leaves Education in that he will go down in history, but will it be for the right reasons? I doubt it.