Michael Gove is fast losing his department as his officers depart leaving a vacuum of experience and expertise. Never mind in Gove’s world the less know about education and learning the better. A source close to the department said: “There are persistent rumours of the tensions of working with this Government. Civil servants are told ‘we’ve already made our minds up’. They have no input into the process.” (source The Independent).The last people this government wants to hear from are practitioners working on the ground, as in other areas. As in the health services every teachers association is fundamentally opposed to this education blitz.
Experiments in setting up Academies – that’s very much what it is – are not going the government’s way. Not that the opposition cab say much because it is they who beagn the push to them, if not the so-called Free-Schools which are moving further and faster away from accountability and democratic control. Public money is being fed to the private sector. It they don;t work there will be nothing left to rebuild another service. Now in Birmingham the desperate Gove is forcing primary schools with Montgomery Primary School to the fore. Angry parents and teachers are mounting a vigorous campaign with the Birmingham Anti-Academy Alliance.
It will not only be government departments that are cleared out, but as new rules come into force pay and conditions change – considerably for the worse, so there is the prospect of an exodus of well qualified staff here too. The new panaceas will be able to bring in anyone they like. Retired army personnel seem to be sought after so we are likely to see something akin to boot camps emerge.