June 19, 2010
Michael Gove’s Class War
Michael Gove is by all signs intent on pressing ahead with the idea of Swedish-style Free Schools. Despite the fact that the man in charge of Sweden’s schools said they won’t work.
You may also recall various commitments from Michael Gove and friends that Free Schools will not be funded at the detriment of the wider education budget. You know, those normal schools for poor oiks where the parents haven’t got the luxury of leisure time, connections, confidence and experience to convert their front parlour into an autonomous education centre for the local Jacostas and Maximilians.
And it comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody that the Tories have really been considering exactly the opposite. Whilst their original weasel-words promised to find the money from “waste” in the education system (for as we all know, British comps are overflowing with surplus brand new text books and uneatan caviar), the Conservatives have outdone perhaps even themselves. They are now revealed to have been considering almost literally taking the food out of poor children’s mouths, to divert resources towards the middle classes.
I’m sure Tories tell themselves comforting stories: “Oh, those poor kids aren’t exactly going to starve, are they? This isn’t bloody Africa after all.” Which of course misses the point that whilst the poorest kids – especially those of primary school age – will indeed subsist on the diets of crisps and wagon wheels that Jamie Oliver famously exposed, many will now be deprived of the one square meal they get a day.
What’s startling about Gove’s commitment to free schools is actually how ideological it is. Rather than targeting the (so-called) “failing” schools, generally comprehensives in deprived inner city areas, that desperately need money pumped not just into the schools, but into the local areas so as to relive the poverty that is the common denominator in “failing” institutions, Gove wistfully applies the (rather selectively chosen) logic of the market. That by allowing middle class parents to choose to educate their kids in a quasi-independent manner, this will somehow create “competition” and “drive up standards.” Despite being warned by the country that’s tried it that it doesn’t actually work, and the prospect of deeply regressive uses of government funding.
Who says ideological principle in the face of uncomfortable reality is dead? Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Michael Gove, the Reverse Robin Hood of our times. Just to ram the point home: there’s a class war alright, and Gove’s side are winning it.
But where art though Lib Dems, who didst claim to be the True Progressive Force of Britain?
Aside from the fact that before the last election Lib Dem education policy was in the hands of David Laws, a man so far to the right many Lib Dems muttered that he should have joined the Tories, there’s a basic reason why the Libs won’t be a bulwark against Tory desire for free schools. Which is that the Lib Dems are a party of the middle class, and that free schools are a policy to benefit the (upper) middle classes. As seen up and down the country at the local level, Lib Dems protect their middle class voters when it comes to actually making decisions. It will be no different as this Parliament grinds on.
Of course, that’s just the hard logic of politics. But it’s also another nail in the coffin of Lib Dem pretensions to being a genuine force of the left.
Tim Worstall said,
June 19, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Shock, Horror!
“Michael Gove is by all signs intent on pressing ahead with the idea of Swedish-style Free Schools. Despite the fact that the man in charge of Sweden’s schools said they won’t work.”
Chief educational bureaucrat says that education system which dispenses with bureaucrats doesn’t work.
Film at 11!
Tom Kealy said,
June 19, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I don’t think the schools have driven up standards in Sweeden, but they have lowered the costs.
Incidentally, they’ve also been highly popular – perhaps Gove is using a different metric than you for measuring education standards (namely the percieved consumer costs and benefits that most market calculations go on).
Shuggy said,
June 20, 2010 at 12:56 pm
“Chief educational bureaucrat says that education system which dispenses with bureaucrats doesn’t work.”
Neat formulation designed to distract from the fact that someone who has been paying at least as much attention to how the the Swedish system works as English ideologues with blogs doesn’t agree with said ideologues. Solution: attempt to trash his reputation by implying self-interest. Shallow, man – shallow.
Tim Worstall said,
June 20, 2010 at 1:03 pm
“Solution: attempt to trash his reputation by implying self-interest. Shallow, man – shallow.”
To make the same case in a deeper manner.
Perhaps you’d prefer Christine Keeler? “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Or perhaps a Nobel Laureate, James Buchanan? Public choice economics?
Mark said,
June 20, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Oh good lord…
the vast majority of people don’t learn anything at school after the age of 12 and that suits the vast majority of people just fine.
Rather than buggering on about fairness and everyone getting an equal education could we please just think about what exactly it is we are hoping to achieve through teaching?
When we all have an equal ability to bullshit, will the world be a better place?
Shuggy said,
June 20, 2010 at 7:43 pm
“Perhaps you’d prefer Christine Keeler?”
Um, not particularly.
“the vast majority of people don’t learn anything at school after the age of 12″
Nonsense. They learn about the super-continent of pangea and also how to roll joints. Actually, unsure about the second one these days – is that why cocaine is all the rage?
MJW said,
June 21, 2010 at 11:51 am
Schools might not be awash with caviar, but that’s a pretty weak straw man.
The education system itself has plenty of fat to trim, lots of different quangos, agencies, and initiatives for every possible cause, plenty of layers of bureaucracy spreading out from the centre to the peripheries. The cost benefit analysis needs to focus on what actually gets spent at a schools level vs what gets siphoned off in the bureaucratic chain.
STU said,
June 23, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Tim Worstall
Sorry to be a pedant, but you are thinking of Mandy Rice Davis re Lord Astor.
Michael Gove’s Class War Continued « Bad Conscience said,
July 5, 2010 at 8:07 am
[...] A serious commitment to education reform would start with abolishing league tables, making an overhauled A Level (and GCSE) system mandatory, and introducing a single central exam board. Instead, Gove appears to be continuing his education-based class war. [...]
condemedquango said,
July 9, 2010 at 11:39 am
“What’s startling about Gove’s commitment to free schools is actually how ideological it is.”
Have to say it’s not startling in any way – the very essence of the Tory Party is ideology, they’re just pretending their outrageous policies are what we all want and what the country needs, rather than what they want.
It came as no surprise to me to learn that £50 million of the funding that used to keep me and my 350-odd colleagues in a job is being redirected to fund this flawed policy.
And I would just like to place on record just what a ridiculous looking little twerp he is.
Ireland and Lib Dem Soul Searching « Bad Conscience said,
July 20, 2010 at 7:31 am
[...] Gove has merrily taken the axe to Britain’s education system – whilst protecting funds for his Free Schools experiment which will advantage the upper middle classes, if it manages to help anyone at all. Osborne’s [...]
Thatcher’s Children « Bad Conscience said,
October 20, 2010 at 7:03 am
[...] Michael Gove’s highly ideological free schools programme, and parallel withdrawal of ordinary state school funds, has attracted much [...]