sally cinnamon wrote:
In education I like the fact that he is big on a core curriculum of sciences, maths, languages and history, and is wanting to try and enforce that the schools in less well off areas make their kids do that core curriculum rather than being given 'soft options'. He is quite into comparative evidence from other education systems and in the better performing ones in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, the kids in the less well off areas are being made to do the same traditional academic subjects as the ones in the posh schools rather than being shunted off into low value 'vocational' courses that aren't valued in those vocations. I know some people say "academics aren't for everyone" and so on but the social mobility is better for kids from lower income backgrounds that have done traditional subjects.
His model is based on the Free Schools idea in Sweden. This is a system that has resulted in 2011 Swedish students dropping to 19th place out of 57 countries for literacy, to 24th in maths, and to 28th in science. This compared with 9th, 17th and 16th in studies done in 2000, 2003 and 2006 respectively.
There is also blatant segregation occurring in Sweden where the best schools with the best teachers are over subscribed and the poorer schools pick up the pieces. The idea you put forward that because he wants all kids to study core subjects in all schools that this will deliver social mobility is incredibly naive as Sweden shows.
If he is into evidence then he would drop the idea immediately. He won't because he is as idealogical driven on this as anything else and the ideology is essentially a kind privatisation of schools where the state has little control, the schools are run by private companies or organisations such as the C of E but they still get tax payers funds.
However I would be worried if Gove became Foreign Secretary.
You should be be worried about having him where he is. He will wreck education just as much as Lansey will wreck the NHS. These are IMO the two most important departments in government and we have extreme right wing nutters in charge of both. Gove may well cherry pick his "evidence" to try an come across as some sort of thoughtful education secretary but he is on as much of a neo-con mission in education as he would be in the FCO.
