16th July 2014 12:00
By Blue Tutors
In a surprise move which has delighted teachers all over the country, Michael Gove has been removed from his post of education secretary in the cabinet reshuffle. It has emerged that the decision was taken after Tory campaign officials identified Gove as a significant obstacle to a conservative party victory. The former education secretary was said to have become a ‘toxic liability’ amongst teachers, managing to alienate not only schools and teaching unions, but also the education watchdog Ofsted. He is now to take up the lower role of chief whip, which would see his status as a full minister removed.
The former secretary of state was also under fire for the problems recently exposed regarding his flagship education policies. Whilst Gove advocated the rise of the Free school as putting freedom of education into parents’ control, many of these schools failed to live up to basic educational standards. The Trojan horse scandal revealed that some schools were being used to promote values contrary to British law and constitution, whilst it emerged that other schools were inflating their results by advocating vocational equivalent courses. Finally, one of the most unpopular policies with voters was allowing unqualified teachers to work in free schools and academies – a move which has seen thousands of unqualified teachers move into permanent teaching posts. This, along with too-frequent stories about financial scams in schools, made Gove a liability for the upcoming election.
For both teachers and parents, the promises of freedom in education were short lived, when the former secretary of state took an unusual interest in the particular texts studied for GCSE English. Defying exam boards and educational advisers, Gove was determined to remove American texts exploring social justice, including Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Despite the outrage expressed by teachers, he maintained the stance that anyone who criticized his policies were part of the “blob”, and ‘the enemy of promise’, a position which earned him the reputation as a hardliner who utterly refused to engage with teachers and educationalists. Yet now that he has gone, the future of education in this country remains far from certain. It is likely that Gove’s replacement, Nicky Morgan, is under orders to mend some fences between the government and the educational establishment, but it will take more than an olive branch to undo the damage done by the outgoing secretary.