What makes a great politician? Definitions of greatness are going to vary widely, and some might argue that no politician can be great. I would like to posit some values which could be construed as being components of greatness if one was to look to someone like Mandela as a great politician.
Effectiveness Gove's big legacy is structural change: his academies and free school programme was his big policy. But was it needed? The statistics suggest not. It was not a cost effective programme; billions was spent getting local authority (LA) schools to convert to academy status. Yet, research carried by LSN and others suggest that academisation does not necessarily raise standards. Similarly, the free school programme has not delivered. Many of them have been set up in areas where they are not needed, many have not been educationally effective, and significant minority have been classified as failing. Problems engendered by a rising roll in many areas have not been addressed by the opening of free schools. The sidelining of LAs in the addressing of this problem has led to the ridiculous situation of Whitehall trying to address the shortage of school places in far flung northern cities. Bureaucratic madness. There is a staff recruitment crisis, which has not been addressed by Gove's reforms to teacher training. His decision to funnel trainees through schools rather than universities has resulted in administrative chaos and recruitment problems. Another big plank of his reforming agenda was performance-related pay, and yet the very organisation he set up to look into evidence-based teaching, the Educational Endowment Foundation, has shown it does not work; it’s not a cost-effective programme for raising standards. Other strategies like encouraging collaborative learning are far more effective. Changes to the school curriculum has resulted in real confusion about what should be taught and an overall diminution in standards as well as real demoralization of the profession who have struggled to cope or understand the pace of change.
Forward-thinking Gove is a politician trapped in ideas of the past; his slavish devotion to neo-liberal ideas makes his work tiresomely predictable. He is, like the Tory government generally, a neo-liberal puppet, a person who has a misplaced faith in marketisation and capitalist economics. And yet we know that unbridled markets don’t work; marketization has been shown to have destructive effects in education in many ways. When learning becomes a commodity to be profited from you get all sorts of perverse and unwanted effects: corruption, short-termism, social segregation. Furthermore, Gove was – and still is – part of a government with a vicious social agenda against poor people; the cuts to working tax credits are the latest in a long line of cuts which have disproportionately affected people. This will inevitably affect children’s achievement at school. The one hard statistic we have about education is the correlation between parental income and pupil performance. Gove is not forward-thinking in terms of the curriculum or assessment. He has a misplaced faith in exams, not realizing that the backwash created from the exam system is very harmful to students’ education. It means that there is constant teaching to the test; I’ve witnessed the ridiculous situation of teachers in Year 7 giving out GCSE exam papers to prepare students for a test which is five years away! The exams he has set up are Victorian; he does not believe in making learn relevant or accessible to young people. Nor does he trust teachers to find more appropriate methods of assessment.
Being a unifying figure Gove did not bring the teaching profession together. He was a very divisive figure, demonising many teachers as the Blob, the enemies of promise, when they were trying their best. The pressure he put on schools has caused a climate of fear to infect our classrooms, where both teachers and students are motivated by anxiety that they will be punished and will fail. He redoubled efforts to set up a false competition between schools, pitting them against each other when we know the best practice is when schools collaborate. He made never fought for teachers; during his tenure teachers saw their conditions of service and their pay and pensions significantly reduced in real terms. As a result, many teachers struggle to make ends meet. He was -- and still is -- hated by the vast majority of students, teachers and parents; this was why he was sacked, because he was seen as such a toxic figure. Can someone as incompetent, divisive and extreme as him ever be called great? I think not.
Some further thoughts I gave this talk at the Michaela Community School, the free school set up by Katherine Birbalsingh, and was arguing against Jonny Porter, a Humanities teacher at the school. He gave a spirited speech which argued that Gove was great because he set high expectations for students and teachers, and he was innovative. I lost the debate in terms of the voting, with the audience being overwhelmingly supportive of what Jonny said and Gove's policies. They appeared to like him most because he introduced a knowledge curriculum and re-instated old fashioned pen and paper exams, sweeping away many vocational qualifications. I said that Gove needed to give teachers the freedom to teach what they felt was appropriate for their children and it was absurd for a politician in Whitehall to dictate what should be taught and how it should be taught -- which Gove effectively did. No one talked about the larger picture; the attack on the poor that Gove and every Tory in the cabinet has supported. The debate was decontextualised from its social setting. However, Jonny and many people in the audience agreed that Gove was highly divisive and was not liked by many students, teachers or parents. Jonny invoked the name of Bevan when talking about Gove; Gove attacked the teaching profession in the same way that Bevan took on the BMA to establish the NHS. Mnnnn. Not sure about that one. Bevan and the Atlee government had a massive mandate from the electorate; everyone, the public at large, had voted for the NHS.
Gove was part of a Coalition government and had no real mandate to privatise and attack the teaching profession. Gove was hated by far more people than Bevan who had the public on his side. Gove was sacked because ultimately parents did not like what he was doing -- it wasn't only the teachers he alienated. Furthermore, Gove's agenda was one of dismantling local democratic institutions (the LAs), whereas Bevan was intent upon introducing universal health care. Gove wanted to dismantle structures that enabled the teaching profession to collaborate, whereas Bevan pushed a fragmented medical profession together under the umbrella of the NHS. Jonny's point is interesting though because it's emblematic of the way the neo-liberals have appropriated and twisted the language of the left.
I think the video of it will go up soon on the MCS website; someone tweeted that at one point I looked sad -- which I did. It saddened me that there was such hostility to what I was saying: at one point, a member of the audience up and said that it was disgraceful that I had mentioned the headteacher who committed suicide after a bad Ofsted inspection (an addition I made to the above speech, which was written a few days ago). I had talked about this incident as being indicative of the fear that Gove and his minions created (it continues) in schools, where there is such ridiculous pressure to get good results that some professionals feel so desperate that it causes serious mental illness. This, obviously, isn't Gove's fault; it's the system that he presided over that creates this climate of fear, which is not a healthy or productive thing. A great politician would have addressed this.
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What I find fascinating here is that nobody seems to care about evidence for or against the "greatness" of what Gove *did* as education secretary. Actions, it seems, are less important than words.
Does that not fascinate you? Can you imagine discussing Bevan as health secretary by talking only about what his long term agenda was, how he fell out with the B.M.A., which claims he made are debatable and who he was rude about and missing out the whole NHS thing? It's an odd ideological lens to view things through, in which all that matters in education is the clash of ideologies, not who gets taught what.
But, you know, if you want to keep making personal attacks on me, while describing criticisms I make of other people's arguments as "personal attacks". You clearly have no interest in the point I was making.
Please refrain from misquoting me by dint of conflating two separate comments. That is to say:
At 7.10 pm I said, "focused attack"
At 7.40 pm I said, "personal slights".
What is clear is that I did not say "personal attacks". You may also wish to look up the definition of 'slight', which is not interchangeable with 'attack'.
"I don't care about evidence."
What a wearying but somehow refreshing exchange. Refreshing because 'Guest' and Janet Downs have so successfully exposed Andrew Old's persistent unwillingness to engage with the evidence that is clearly stated numerous times. I had a similar exchange with Andrew Old, in response to a piece I wrote about 'progressive' education, here:
https://jennycollinsteacher.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/perception-vs-reality/
I'm reminded of a couple of panels from Daryl Cunningham's graphic novel 'Supercrash' * : "...liberals are often shocked to find that their well-reasoned and factually supported arguments are simply dismissed or even viciously attacked by the political right. Conservatives seem to have a gift for blocking out facts that threaten their world view." p.174
* it's about the origins of the 2008 financial crash; lots of information about Ayn Rand, her number one fan Alan Greenspan, the greed that was allowed to go unchecked etc etc
The entire discussion above, with all the factual evidence put forward by 'Guest' and Janet Downs, is dismissed by Old on his Twitter account with a sarcastic "...if you can call this debate".
In the exchange above Andrew differentiates between what Gove 'said' and what he 'did'. But this ignores the fact that what Gove did grew from what he said. Gove's words weren't empty rhetoric but statements of intent.
Take the infamous press release of December 2010 when he deliberately ignored a warning from the OECD not to use their PISA results for the UK for 2000 because they'd been found to be flawed. But this statement, which gave rise to the 'plummeting down league tables in a decade' myth, was used to underpin his entire education programme. The words accompanied actions which include: academization by force if necessary; increasing the reliance on tests; rewriting the national curriculum (after two advisers resigned)' introducing hasty exam reforms with no time for trialling or evaluation...
Parrish (as dictator) just denied everything. The accusations were not true, he repeated. The interrogator was eventually left speechless.
Simple denial - no need to mount a counter-argument, just deny or dismiss the argument with 'weak', 'misleading' etc.
It does seem a bit surreal talking about Andrew Old in the same breath as 'the political right', 'Conservatives' and even Ayn Rand.
Andrew Old is the editor of Labour Teachers!
http://www.labourteachers.org.uk/author/editor/
I also think Andrew Old has a point when he says that rather too much of the discussion is focused on what Gove (may have) meant to do, rather than what he actually did do. Once people start talking about neo-liberal privatisation plots they do begin to come across a bit swivel-eyed New World Orderish.
Oddly (perhaps even ironically) I think Gove will be remembered as the SoS who tamed Ofsted. A Headteacher showed me his school's pre-Gove SEF the other day, laying next to the slip, 18 pages of A4 current version. The contrast was astonishing.
Although the new framework didn't come in 'til Gove had gone, it was Gove who told Ofsted to cut back on their areas of inspection and stop foisting their own ideas of model-lessons on everyone.
Tell you what, Janet, if I find that you have said something that is factually incorrect, would you concede that everything else you argued is wrong?
I'm betting you wouldn't. I'm betting that on this, like every other argument you use, you only care about the conclusion, not the validity of the argument.
On the other hand, the three of you could continue to have a conversation between yourselves about how terrible it is that I have disagreed with you on this fundamental principle, instead of having an evidence-based, but irrelevant, discussion that assumes the very point I'm disputing.
I am of the view that Gove failed to achieve great reform. But I am also of the view that challenging vested interests, and starting a debate, were the best part of what he did, not, as people seem to be arguing, proof that he was bad at his job.
1. What exactly is the argument which you have been advancing (as opposed to pointing out the fallacious ideas of other people)?
2. What are the "incontestable facts" that "might help support" this argument (whatever it is)?
I think this is self-evidently a sensible way to approach things, but if you need supporting facts, then the fact that those who are disagreeing with this principle in the case of Michael Gove, won't disagree with it in the case of Nye Bevan, is evidence that the principle I'm putting forward is not absurd or unfair.
I'm unconvinced Gove 'tamed' Ofsted. Sir Michael Wilshaw has reminded inspectors there are no 'model-lessons' and he has been frustrated by constant suggestions there were. That's not to say there weren't inspectors who just looked for certain things - hopefully this will stop now that outsourced inspections are no more.
I disagree that inspections are now better. They are too short and rely too much on stats and swift observations of a few lessons. Early Ofsted inspections took a week and commented on every subject. I would like to see that returned.
1 Give said he would allow Serco to run schools. Now I know Andrew would dismiss that as something he said which didn't happen but when IES was allowed to run Breckland Free school Fraser Nelson, writing in the Telegraph, praised Gove for bringing in profit-making schools 'unobtrusively'.
2 The Public Accounts Committee expressed concern about related party transactions between academy trustees and companies linked to them (actually the NAO had made the same point before 2010 - some academies felt under pressure to purchase services from companies run by sponsors). The EFA has told trustees any services should be provided at cost, but Margaret Hodge, ex-PAC chair, said all they'd need to do would be to increase the cost. In other words, academization, heavily promoted by Gove, has allowed some trustees to profit by bunging contracts to connected companies.
3 Gove is close to Murdoch whose News Corp employed Joel Klein to lead News Corp's 'aggressive push into the education market' via a company called Amplify which recruited Rachel Wolf, one-time Gove assistant who was put in charge of the New Schools Network which promotes free schools. In the end Amplify proved a failure but Wolf is back and is now in Number 10's Policy Unit.
4 Gove sat on the board of Atlantic Bridge, the charity which was removed from the Charities Commission register after a critical report in 2007. Atlantic Bridge had signed a special partnership with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) whose motto is “Limited government, free markets, federalism.” News Corp was a member of Alec. See here for more info.
Gove said he would allow Serco to run schools.
And the previous Labour government allowed Serco to run all the schools in Bradford on at ten-year £350m + contract.
Did that mean that Labour were also part of a long term conspiracy too?
I really do think you are - unusually - crossing the line into conspiracy territory here.
Gove is close to Murdoch. Well yes, he did used to work for Murdoch at the Times. And Mrs Gove was a Times writer too. But there is nothing sinister about the Times. If you saw someone reading the Times on the train you wouldn't think better follow him to see where he got it.
As for Alec's motto: Limited government, free markets, federalism
- llose the federalism and that could be the motto of the Conservative party. Come to think of it, keep the federalism and it could be the motto of some of the Orange Book Lib Dems!
I remember dimly reading a story saying that Murdoch did once show interest in having an academy or a free school but Gove told him to apply in the usual way along with everyone else.
It does not follow that in criticising Murdoch I'm criticising the Times as a newspaper (although I have sometimes criticised what was written in the Times on this site). But Gove's closeness to Murdoch goes beyond he and his wife writing for the Times. Gove poured effusive praise over Murdoch when he defended his frequent meetings with News Corp while he was SoS. These meetings and Gove's connection with News Corp's Joel Klein are listed in depth here. The article also described a meeting with Gove, Murdoch, his entourage and Rebekah Brookes on the site of Murdoch's proposed academy. The Guardian suggests this was 'quietly abandoned' after the hacking scandal broke shortly afterwards.
ALEC does more than lobby for less government, free markets and federalism. It drafts model state legislation including statues which encourage online schooling, the privatization of public education and the removal of collective bargaining. The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, both owned by News Corp have defended ALEC from criticism.
ALEC lost much support from businesses after it was accused of supporting African-American voter suppression and the 'Stand Your Ground' law.
What is unlikely to be known (revealed) is how much of the Ofsted changes since 2010 have been down to SMW and how much was down to MG (directly or through arm twisting).
The big difference is that Gove's use of the flawed data was deliberate. And before you ask how do I know, I'll explain. The press release which contained the faulty data and the claim the UK had plummeted down league tables in the preceding decade contained an item (paragraph 76) from the UK briefing sheet. But paragraph 2 said:
'Trend comparisons, which are a feature of the PISA 2009 reporting are not reported here because' or the United Kingdom it is only possible to compare 2006 and 2009 data. As the PISA 2000 and PISA'2003 samples for the United Kingdom did not meet the PISA response-rate standards, no trend comparisons are possible with these years.'
There was also a footnote explaining why.
Funny how this was missed when it was in such a prominent position.
Gove and other politicians (except Morgan) stopped using the 2000 PISA data after the US Statistics Watchdog expressed concern.
But if I make an error I'll correct it and apologise as quickly as possible as in this post here.
The big difference here seems to be one of intention. You think that the way Gove used those statistics shows not just error, but an intention to mislead. And on his part, rather than say the civil servants whose job it is to keep ministers informed. Whereas things you get wrong are just accidental error.
Can you see why this sort of things, as I said before, seems so thin?
By the way, the researchers who told the education department years before Gove took office that they should use the 2000 PISA figures (but not the 2003) ones, were they dishonest, sincerely mistaken, or neither?
Unfortunately, they were already in the public domain and could be used by those who chose to ignore the prominent warning not to do so.
So now you're blaming civil servants for not keeping Gove properly informed. I don't accept Gove never read the UK briefing paper. But let's accept our argument that he did not know. But five days later, FullFact wrote about the DfE's use of the data and asked the DfE for an explanation.
I wrote to my MP (also a minister straddling the DfE and BIS) at the time. This resulted in a long discussion. It is highly unlikely that Gove was not told.
Is everyone who used the 2000 PISA figures about the UK, after the OECD stopped using them, including researchers and civil servants guilty of misrepresentation? Or is it just the politicians?
Just had another look at the infamous press release of 7 December 2010. It begins with:
'Michael Gove comments on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study of schools systems from around the world.'
The release contains direct quotes from the man himself.
Are you still seriously suggesting he didn't know the OECD had warned against using the PISA 2000 data for the UK when he seems to have had detailed knowledge of what was in the UK Briefing Sheet?
You appear to have simultaneously called the point "tendentious" and "so obvious as to be not worth making". Which is it?
And bear in mind, I was being repeatedly criticised for considering the point to be obvious rather than providing evidence of some sort.
"Would you also agree that whether or not someone may be described as “great” is entirely a matter of judgement and that, for this reason, it is usual to defer such judgements until sufficient time has passed for a distanced consensus to emerge among historians and other people deemed to have expertise?"
I suspect so, though no reason people can't make provisional judgements earlier if they want to. As I said, I wouldn't judge Gove to have been a great education secretary, I just felt the case against his greatness missed the point spectacularly by not attempting to evaluate achievements.
"Also, would you agree that sometimes a politician may take some time to find his ideal position?"
Entirely possible, but the debate was about Gove as education secretary.
I thought the point of debates if to argue for or against the motion. I didn't think it was necessary for both protagonists to make each other's points for them.
Apart from Bevan, where you appear to be claiming that because Bevan insulted his opponents then it was OK for Gove to do the same, you haven't referred to what was said in the debate. You haven't mentioned any Gove achievements (apologies if I missed them among the generalised dismissals) although I cited one: his reduction of the value of equivalent exams. Although I didn't mention it above, I also agreed with his stance on grammar schools and his concern that top jobs were dominated by privately-educated people (or should I not have mentioned those because they were things he 'said' and not 'did'?).
You're right that it should be for history to decide whether or not a politician was 'great'. It is only after a period of time that the consequences of policies are known. But in politics, greatness comes to very few. As Enoch Powell said:
'All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.'
There will come a day in the life of any politician when the electorate turns - think of the drubbing the LibDems got in the last election. Or landslide victories in the last 36 years eg 1979 (Tories) 1997 (Labour) and remember Thatcher's tearful exit from Number 10 and how Chilcot hangs over Tony Blair (when it's eventually published).
I understood the word 'tendentious' referred not to above statement but for your 'distinction between "doing" and "saying".
If my understanding is correct, Michael was not calling the same point both 'tendentious' and 'obvious'.
I may be wrong, of course, and I'm sure Michael could clarify.
Many people who should never have been members joined or came to prominence during the terrible Blair years. Hopefully some of them may soon be pursuing their fortunes in more suitable homes.
"Andrew – thank you for simplifying your question. It wasn’t obvious before. In answer, anyone who used the data knowing it was wrong is guilty of misrepresentation. That includes media, special advisers, civil servants and politicians."
That's evading the question. The question is how we judge whether people thought it was wrong, and still said it. If we say that anyone who had heard the objections *knew* it was wrong, then we have a real problem. The objections were known early and rejected by the department. So is that error or misrepresentation?
Can you also acknowledge that it is a shame that those arguing against Gove's greatness, did not seem to focus on that in the debate?
And let's be clear on the point about Bevan. The point is not to justify anything Gove did, but to check that people are not applying an inconsistent standard. If somebody finds Gove too rude to be great, but thinks Bevan was great despite being even ruder, we know that their argument is not even convincing to them, let alone to anyone else.
If it was just an 'error', it was one that went on far longer than it should have done. And if it was an 'error' then Gove should have stopped repeating the error after FullFact wrote to the DfE. But he didn't.
Of course, if disagreeing with the OECD is arrogance and, therefore, wrong, then we are back to the same problem of you taking any agreement with you to be evidence, but disagreement with you to be wrong.
1. Which previously unchallenged "vested interests" did Gove challenge? How did he do it and what improvements resulted?
2. Was there no educational debate taking place before Gove? If there was, what fresh perspectives did he bring to the debate? How did he shape the debate in a way that differentiated his approach from that of his various New Labour predecessors?
It would be genuinely interesting to know what you think about these matters.
'The research and evidence that I undertook was to look at what the highest performing education jurisdictions do. When the OECD published its table on how our country had been doing in education over the past 10 years, I was struck to see that under Labour's stewardship we had slipped in the international league tables for English, for mathematics and for science.'
It appears from this answer that he did his own research and having done his research he still used flawed data. Unless you're going to suggest that a man of Gove's intelligence who undertook his own research somehow missed a prominent warning and explanatory footnote.
Secondly, I don't think we can evaluate Gove's achievements (if any), even provisionally, without a much greater length of time having elapsed. Politicians don't like this, of course, but it can't be helped.
Thirdly, my point about Gove as Justice Secretary is not completely irrelevant. I do believe that Gove takes extremely seriously his commitment to Arnoldian values but that the particular circumstances of his social background, upbringing, schooling and higher education made it almost impossible for him to approach the role of Education Secretary with the detachment necessary for success in high office. I think that as Justice Secretary (so far) he is looking much more statesmanlike.
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