Remember the days when Gove used to passionately defend every last part of his policies? When he used to whip statistics out of his sleeve about kids in Shanghai, and then camp it up with a French Lesbian poem before berating some poor teacher who recently taught equations through the medium of mime? I miss that Gove. He wasn’t at committee today.
The reason I miss him is because Gove’s strength has never been detail but he was (almost?) forgiveable for being a person who was at least trying to *do* something. Love it or hate it, misguided or otherwise, there was at least energy and a willingness to engage with important issues. Instead, today we got a Gove who was admittedly handed a series of rather bitty questions but instead of engaging, he practically shrugged. On my count he said “I’ll write to you” at least six times (that’s short for “I don’t know but I’ll get a minion to find out”) and there was a lot of mention of other people – Edward Timpson, David Laws, Michael Wilshaw, Charlie Taylor. The impression became clear that these are theguys Gove thinks are actually doing stuff. Which can only leave one wondering what his own time is being spent on?
Today NFER published its Teacher Labour Market in England Annual Report 2024. It is not an encouraging read. Recruitment remains insufficient to maintain current staffing levels, achieving just 61% of target for secondary. The usually robust Primary sector is forecast to reach only 83% of target. At the same time, the number of teachers considering…
When it came to the Advanced British Standard, I was initially guilty of judging a policy book by its cover. My first impression of the ABS was that it sounded too much like IBS to become a compelling brand. I then wondered about the ‘B’; given our devolved education system, what would be British about…
As one of my first projects at CfEY, I was delighted to join the team working on a rapid review of the current landscape surrounding school trips in England on behalf of the Clore Duffield Foundation. Our project aimed to gather key insights on how school trips can be made more accessible to children and…
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