The real thinking is coming from professionals, not policymakers
As Michael Gove learns that hasty policymaking can come back to bite, some good ideas are now coming from the professionals who do the job, says Fiona Millar, Guardian, 11/3/13
Are the wheels coming off the Gove bus? The once-Teflon secretary of state seems to be more on the back rather than front foot these days, not helped by the well documented and thoroughly unpleasant activities of a few key advisers. Very bad politics on the part of someone who aspires to be a party leader, in my opinion.
But it is the progress of his substantive reforms that, on closer examination, provide a textbook example of how hasty, over-promoted, ill-thought-through policies usually come back to bite.
The short-term legacy of the Academies Act – not in the coalition agreement, pushed through parliament using a form of legislation previously reserved for combating terrorism, supported by the supine Liberal Democrats and supposedly a cure-all for the nation's education ills – is distinctly mixed. The original Labour academies mission is so diluted that the performance of academies is now no different from similar maintained schools and conversions have flattened out. The vast majority of schools in the country are still maintained but there is still understandable widespread concern about what sort of middle tier can hold schools to account in an increasingly fragmented landscape.
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