The Gove Legacy

Education in Britain after the Coalition

M. Finn

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137491503
• eBook ISBN: 9781137491510
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

Michael Gove was, unquestionably, a pivotal figure in British educational reform during his time as the coalition's Secretary of State for Education. This team of experts, drawn from academia, think-tanks and trade unions, offer an unrivalled early assessment of the impact of Gove, and his reforms, on the British educational landscape.

1

The Gove Legacy in State Education

Brian Lightman

Abstract: Lightman offers a commentary on three aspects of Gove’s legacy: the main directions of policy since 2010, the current state of the education service and the possible implications for the next government. Analysing a period of tumultuous and often controversial change in almost every aspect of education policy Lightman explores coalition policy on autonomy, accountability, deregulation, academies/free schools, curriculum, qualifications, teacher professionalism, pay and conditions, social mobility and funding. He investigates whether this period will be looked back upon as a transformational one which has paved the way towards a genuinely self-improving and school-led system or one of missed opportunities resulting from the way reforms were implemented and Gove’s stormy relationship with the teaching profession.

Keywords: Michael Gove; schools; state education

Finn, Mike. The Gove Legacy: Education in Britain after the Coalition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137491510.0005.

Introduction

By a margin of just one month Michael Gove was the longest serving Secretary of State for Education since the post was first introduced. Prior to his surprise appointment as Chief Whip in July 2014 it had been widely expected that he would remain in post until the May 2015 election, thus seeing through to completion the vast array of reforms he had introduced. Although his relationship with what he described as the ‘educational establishment’ was often challenging and at times confrontational, there is absolutely no doubt that he will be remembered as one of the reforming secretaries of state whose ambition to make far reaching changes to almost every aspect of England’s education service was only matched by his passion and energy. Equally beyond doubt are his skills as an orator, debater and adept politician – a formidable opponent on the front bench.

But how and when will we be able to assess the impact of his policies? A vast amount of reform has been initiated. Many structural changes have been put in place but it is far too early to be able to identify clearly measurable outcomes in terms of standards of achievement. As such this chapter provides a commentary on three aspects of Gove’s legacy:

the main directions of policy since 2010;

the current state of the education service and challenges facing it; and

the possible implications for the next government.

A period of tumultuous change

I vividly remember walking into the Department for Education (DfE) the day after Michael Gove took over as Secretary of State. The change of name of the department from the Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to the Department for Education and associated branding were highly significant. Throughout the next four years those aspects of DCSF policy relating to children and families would be largely overshadowed by those which related to academic education. Symbolically a modern coffee bar in the waiting room for visitors had disappeared. In its place was an austere Victorian school desk. The rainbow logo and brightly coloured murals in the DCSF had been replaced with austere signage and sepia pictures of schools from bygone times. All of this symbolised the new direction of government policy, based on a ‘traditional’ education and an ‘academic’ curriculum.

The White Paper The Importance of Teaching¹ published in 2010 set out the main direction of the coalition government’s education policy for the next five years. Increased autonomy for schools underpinned by structural changes such as extensive academisation, free schools and teaching schools would be balanced by a strong accountability framework and a relentless focus on ‘academic rigour’. The reforms, based on the three coalition principles of ‘freedom, fairness and responsibility’ concentrated particularly but not exclusively on the following areas:

Autonomy

The academy movement was at the heart of this. Academy conversion was seen as a key driver of rising standards, giving schools the autonomy to shape their own visions and take full responsibility for their destinies unencumbered by centralised regulation. Under the previous Labour government the academies movement had concentrated on sponsored academies to which often substantial resources and initiatives such as the London Challenge had been targeted in order to enable the schools to address challenges which were a barrier to high-performance.² Coalition policies extended the ability to convert to Academy status at first to schools graded outstanding by Ofsted and then to a broader range.³ In stark contrast to the process of conversion to Grant Maintained Status under the last Conservative government,⁴ conversion to academy status, which has a similar level of autonomy and responsibility, was a very rapid process.⁵ It brought substantial additional funding to those schools in the early tranches. This reduced as more schools converted. By 1 November 2014 there were 4,615 academies representing more than half of secondary schools and a much smaller but growing proportion of primary schools many of which were in Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) which had grown in number to 735.⁶

With the certainty of a lengthy period of austerity many schools saw conversion as a protection against budget reductions. However many others viewed academy status as an opportunity to take greater control over their vision for the future of their schools. This was particularly the case in areas where headteachers and governors felt that local authorities were not providing the kind of support or services they needed. As more schools converted and austerity measures were implemented, the role of local authorities was further downgraded by government. Many services were extensively cut back leaving only skeletal provision limited to minimal statutory requirements in many areas. This, in turn, increased the incentive for schools in areas affected by these cutbacks to convert.

At the same time free schools were rapidly opened. By 2014, 251 were open with more planned.⁷ A total of 65 studio schools and University Technical Colleges (UTCs) were also open.⁸ Many were in areas where there were already surplus school places, putting existing provision under heavy competitive pressure and exacerbating the shortage of places in areas of population growth.⁹

As the majority of the new schools have not yet been in existence for long enough to take students through to external examinations, it would be premature to attempt a reliable evaluation of their effectiveness. Whilst there have undoubtedly been examples of excellent and highly innovative practice in some of these schools, there have also been a significant number of high profile failures leading to the departure of heads and governors or even closure at a very early stage of the schools’ development.¹⁰

The extensive academisation of the secondary sector did not lead to the fragmentation of the system some had feared. Many school leaders were quick to realise that collaboration and partnership working were vitally important and they worked hard to foster such relationships. Teaching School alliances and Multi-Academy Trusts were examples of formal structures which developed in large numbers. There were also many other less formal links between schools including the joint procurement of services, planning of training and the establishment of many different initiatives led by the profession such as Whole Education, the ResearchEd movement and various social network groups.

What therefore emerged from these far reaching structural changes was in one respect a dynamic and evolving landscape with many good or even outstanding features and some promising ‘green shoots’ pointing towards the development of a self-improving, school-led system. On the other hand, in the haste to accelerate conversion and create new free schools, too little attention was paid to due diligence and the capacity of schools to take on the responsibilities of a distinct legal entity. In some schools, this gave rise to issues with governance where schools were not adequately prepared to take on the substantial additional responsibilities of academy status.

Accountability

The high level of autonomy promised to schools was matched by an equally high level of accountability. Whilst few would argue against the need for a public service funded by the taxpayer to be accountable, balancing autonomy and accountability has been a major challenge for the coalition government. The greatest of these policy tensions was that between the stated intention to give schools more autonomy and the reality where performance tables were used to drive practice in much the same way as state regulation had done in the past.

Gove was committed to providing the public with as much data as possible. Information about schools’ performance over and above the indicators which were already published was placed in the public domain with large quantities of raw data being made available. Although it is not clear how widely this was accessed by individual stakeholders, the principles of openness and transparency were in the public interest.

Other developments such as the Ofsted dashboard added to the range of data available, and with a user friendly interface, were more widely accessed. A problem however which continues to beset this policy has been the impact of the ongoing reforms to qualifications on the validity of this data; because qualifications have been changing from year to year it is becoming increasingly difficult to make year on year comparisons or achieve a reliabl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: The Gove Ascendancy Michael Gove as Secretary of State for Education
• 1  The Gove Legacy in State Education
• 2  The Gove Legacy in Independent Schools: The Making and Unmaking of a Supreme Goviet
• 3  The Gove Legacy in the Curriculum: The Case of History
• 4  The Gove Legacy: Where Policy Meets the Pupil
• 5(a)  Education beyond the Gove Legacy: The Case of Higher Education (1)
• 5(b)  Education beyond the Gove Legacy: The Case of Higher Education (2) Ideology in Action
• 6  Opening Doors or Narrowing Opportunities? The Coalitions Approach to Widening Participation, Social Mobility and Social Justice
• 7(a)  The Gove Legacy and the Politics of Education after 2015 (1)
• 7(b)  The Gove Legacy and the Politics of Education after 2015 (2): Skills and Accountability
• 7(c)  The Gove Legacy and the Politics of Education after 2015 (3): Can the Legacy Endure?
• Conclusion: The Gove Legacy in Education
• Index