Gove nicked our schools and handed them to his mates

Further to the question of 'hey Gove, where have the title deeds of our state schools gone?' there is a post on the Guardian comment is free site, in response to the story about Gove's criticism of Etonians in the cabinet.

I offer it with no comment. People better informed than me can judge whether it's on the button or not...


Start:
"Since Gove took over - schools all over England failing, free schools being shut down, academy companies being stripped of control of schools

Absolute CHAOS - so why did Gove deliberately create such chaos

Each time a school becomes an academy the council must hand over the title deeds for the school if it has them (avg value £5m per school)

As over 2,000 schools have been forced to become academies that is £10 billion (min) state assets Michael Gove has demanded the title deeds be handed to him

I wrote an FOI request to Michael Gove's department and asked him where are the title deeds to England's schools

After 3 months he still refused to answer - I had to involve the information commissioner who wrote and demanded they answer within 10 days

And now we find out why Michael Gove did not want to answer

the reply I got

The department of Education has absolutely no record of any of the title deeds for the school - not in paper format or electronic format

Now as councils held title deeds for state assets safely for decades - and Michael Gove used the Academies Bill to force councils to hand them to him - the Secretary of State For Education -

Where are all the title deeds for the schools Mr Gove

At the end they told me to write to a company the Tory Party Treasurer is on the board of - and ask the private company if they know what Michael Gove has done with the title deeds for state assets

Any good magician will tell you - create a distraction - to get away with the trick

And the trick here is - Michael Gove transferring £10 billion of state assets to private companies - where no payment was received for the state assets - and taxpayers forced to pay over £50,000,000 in legal fees alone to fund the trick

Thatcher sold state assets - Michael Gove gives them away - and some of the companies he gave them away to - just happen to have very prominent Tory party members on the boards - with us even paying all legal fees

Now I live in Scotland - but if it was my school that became an academy I would be writing to Michael Gove right now - and speaking to my councillors right now and demanding to know where are the title deeds for my school - because these schools are state assets (or they were until Michael Gove disposed of the title deeds with absolutely not a thing on record in the Dof E)

that's what you call magic

Now the reality is Michael Gove has set up Southern Cross For Education - where

Academy companies have the title deeds for schools - they can sell them - and then sign extortionate leases to rent them (and the money goes offshore to the Cayman Islands as "excess funds")

Now Gove changed the law to say Academy's don't have to publish their accounts publicly - unlike every other charity in the country

And Gove changed the law to say No Academy trustee can be held liable for any losses

And Gove is currently trying to change the Academies bill to say instead of the title deeds going to " the proprietor of the school" - to "someone associated with the school"

Now does that mean the Tory Party Treasurer, instead of putting your school's title deeds in Ark Schools name - he can instead put your school's title deeds in the Tory Party Treasurer's name

Now if that is not "cronyism" of the most absolutely shocking sort - I don't know what is

Serious investigations need to be asked as to how Michael Gove can have "lost" the title deeds for £10 billion of state assets without a trace - after councils kept them safe for decades!"

End

Gove the giver: schools given away.

This comes from the comments thread following an article about Gove's maths curriculum plans:

first here's the Guardian article itself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/13/michael-gove-maths-reforms-flawed-charity


Here's the comment:


Gove once again distracting fromthe main point of his educatio reform - which is

In less than 18 months Michael Gove has transferred the title deeds of over 1900 English schools and the land the schools stand on to private companies

In less than 18 months OVER £1BILLION worth of title deeds now in the hands of the private sector

OVER £1BILLION state assets given away for free and accountants in the privatae sector cannot believe the government has also spent £481,750,000 in legal fees alone - nearly £HALF A BILLION in legal fees to transfer the title deeds of our schools to private companies

Now Gove has borrowed £half a billion - and we - the tax payers must pay this back - we the tax payers must pay the interest - to give away taxpayer owned assets to private companies

So when you pass the schools you paid to build, that you held the title deeds for - Michael Gove decided he wanted to give it away free

So who owns the schools now

In many cases Michael Gove has handed the title deeds to your school to Tory Party Members

Tory Party Member Mr Harris and his wife - they've been given the title deeds for lots of English schools and the land since Michael Gove became education secretary.

Now I wonder why Philip Harris and his good lady wife's company has been handed the title deeds to taxpayer owned schools worth £100's millions - Harris made donations to David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party. He is considered to be one of his personal friends

Who else in the Tory Party is on the board of companies handed the title deeds to £100's million of taxpayers title deeds to schools and land in England

Mr Stanley Fink - former banker and "god of hedge fund industry" -- in 2009 appointed cop-treasurer of the Tory Party -

Fink previously donated £2.62m to the Conservative party

What has Stanley Fink got in return for being a member of the Tory Party and what return has he been given on his investment in the Tory Party

David Cameron gave him a seat in the House Of Lords immediately he came to power

David Cameron and Michael Gove have also gave his company the title deeds for schools and land worth, again, £100's millions - via Ark Schools

Stanley Fink's ark schools - state in their accounts - any "underspends" from their schools - the money goes to the Cayman Islands - via Stnaley Fink's Ark Stockbrokers

So -Mr Gove - Let's Talk Maths

When Tory's are in charge of education -

How much did the goverment increase the deficit by just to pay for legal fees to transfer the title deeds of schools - we the taxpayers paid to build and which we owned - nearly HALF A BILLION to day in just 18 month

How Many members of the Tory Party now have the title deeds to the schools and the land ? - I've named just two, you tell us the rest

What is the Value of state assets Michael Gove and David Cameron have transferred from taxpayers - how much did the private companies pay for the assets (NOTHING)

How much have members of the Tory Party made from selling school land in the past 18 month (when they got it for free

How much money, from English Education funds, meant to be spent on Education of English children has been transferred to the Cayman Islands for the schools Tory Party Member Stanley Fink's company controls

What is the total value of the schools and land so far (conservative estimates to date over £1billion - what's the real figure Michael)

So when Michael Gove tells us children should read in Roman Numerals - Tory Party Members shake hands and congratulate themselves in abusing power in Goverment to transferring £1billion of state assets and Land to each other - that's the only Maths Michael Gove is talking in England and they celebrate with champagne at how easy it all is

Observer: Gove's experts revolt...(wheels coming off)

Michael Gove's own experts revolt over 'punitive' model for curriculum

Education secretary has been bypassing the panel set up to advise on reforms, claim senior members

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• Daniel Boffey, policy editor
• The Observer, Sunday 17 June 2012
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Education secretary Michael Gove has been criticised for how his handling of changes to how primary school children are taught in maths, science and English. Photograph: David Jones/PA

Michael Gove, the education secretary, is in open warfare with the panel of experts commissioned to advise the government on the controversialnational curriculum he announced last week.

Three members of the panel have made public their dismay at Gove's handling of the changes to how primary school children are taught maths, science and English, including the introduction of an officially mandated spelling list for children to master.

Professor Andrew Pollard, who described the plans as "crude" on a blog, told the Observer he believed Gove's model for reform was "punitive and controlling".

His colleague, Professor Mary James, president of the British Educational Research Association, published correspondence between the panel and Gove laying bare the "tensions", as she described them, with the department.

And Professor Dylan Wiliam said he believed the principle of learning from the best education systems in the world had been "lost" during the creation of the proposed programmes of study.

Further claims include:

■ A shadow team of advisers, whose identity has not been made "transparent", was advising Gove and bypassing the official panel in a move that raised concerns among the experts.

■ Two of the experts resigned last October over concerns about the government's "direction of travel" towards a highly prescriptive curriculum but were persuaded to stay on board.

■ The panel was upset to discover its official report was "quietly" published on the Monday before Christmas, avoiding media exposure.

The revelations will be a considerable embarrassment for Gove, who last week thanked the panel for its "superb work in shaping" the curriculum, a claim his critics say is hollow.

The proposed changes focus on a rigorous curriculum, with pupils expected to memorise times tables up to 12 by age nine, multiply and divide fractions by age 11 and begin to learn poetry at five.

But last night Wiliam said he "struggled to see the linkage" between the proposed curriculum and the original intention of learning from the best systems in the world. "If you don't have a set of principles for a curriculum it just becomes people's pet topics," he said.

Speaking to the Observer, Pollard escalated the row by questioning Gove's claim to have taken on board the advice that teachers should be given freedom to teach as they saw best. "We need to have systems that encourage constant improvement and take people on board with it. I think the model the government is adopting is really punitive and controlling," he said. "There were attempts by the expert panel to bring the freedom of teachers into discussion and the curriculum was delayed a year because of this.

"When we raised this, Gove, to his credit, said 'OK, we will look at these issues seriously and we will move it on', but what has actually come out is not a serious engagement with these issues. What they have published now is just the programmes of study, but we don't have a sense of the freedoms the schools are supposed to have."

He added: "The word freedom has been part of Michael Gove's rhetoric. But in terms of the academy, it is almost freedom to retain inequality, isn't it? In the case of the curriculum, he does talk about teachers in schools having freedom – but there is so much structure and constraint around them, I don't think the freedom is going to be very real."

Pollard said he had grown concerned that Gove was not being transparent about where he was picking up his advice on the programmes of study. He said: "The DfE hasn't made transparent the people who have contributed to these programmes of study."

Chairman of the expert panel Tim Oates rejected the concerns, adding: "The principles agreed with the expert panel, including Andrew, at the start of the review remain in place There is greater demand and detail in the content of these key subjects and there is greater freedom for teachers in how they teach it. Publishing content year by year is not some rigid straitjacket. There remains flexibility for schools in the scheduling of content. The draft Programmes of Study are drawn from a rigorous research base, both domestically and internationally."

Michael Gove: Prince of Chaos. It's worse than I thought.

Here's one I missed. Perhaps you saw it. I didn't...


'Reforms to the national curriculum in England will not take place until the autumn of 2014 – a year later than planned – the Education Secretary Michael Gove has revealed in a written statement. However, the changes will be compulsory for a minority of secondary schools because academies are not obliged to deliver the curriculum.

"The longer timescale will allow for further debate with everyone interested in creating a genuinely world-class education system," Gove said. The delay puts back plans to change how schools teach English, maths, science and PE. However, it has been announced separately that history, geography, design and technology, the arts and foreign languages will become compulsory for all pupils up to the age of 16."'

(from www.publicservice.co.uk December 20 2011)

So let's unpack this:

Michael Gove is at present driving the academies waggon at breakneck speed through parents' and teachers' groups, kicking aside anybody in his way, demanding that 'county' schools (ones that come under the jurisdiction of a local authority) become academies. Presumably, his dream is that over the next eighteen months, many hundreds more schools will become academies - perhaps a majority.

All the while, some nibelungen in the underground caves of the Department of Education are sweating blood over the exact wording of a 'national' (snigger) curriculum for the subject that I'm involved with - 'English' -  in the non-place we call England. In other words it'll be a national curriculum that won't be national and won't be a curriculum. It'll be the combined wit and wisdom of Michael Gove, the nibelungen and whatever thoughts emerged or will emerge from 'consultation', and then foisted on to those schools (and only those schools) which, perversely are NOT funded directly from the same corner of administration as this new curriculum - that is, Westminster! Academies are funded and controlled from national government.

Meanwhile, you could be a successful scrap metal merchant, a US bank (presumably one that hasn't gone bust or proven to be bent) or a religious foundation - or whatever - and you can set up your academy with your 'ethos' and invent your own curriculum for English. In other words money can buy you the right to set the curriculum in an ever-growing part of what we laughingly still call the state system, or indeed 'public' education.

Why should local authority 'county' schools have to suffer the imposition of any part of Michael Gove's fervid imagination? We've already heard him wittering on at Tory Party Conference about a utopia where all children (though, not the ones in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and not the ones in private schools, free schools or academies) will be reading the works of John Dryden. Why, if there is a genuine consensus that there should be national curriculum, where every pupil will leave with some kind of agreed entitlement, is it good politics to have a system where there is no consensus of practice? Either you have a national curriculum or you don't. What's the point of a make-believe one?

Then, in Michael Gove's statement we read of him talking about a longer timescale allowing for further debate. Why am I laughing silently into my beard?  I won't compromise my friends but several people I know with thirty or forty years experience of teaching and research in literacy, literature and education have already had some experience of what the Gove team's idea of consultation and debate is. I've seen at first hand how Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, for example, treated a group of librarians and advocates of reading for pleasure. At the launch of last summer's 'Reading Challenge' (the excellent summer holiday project which brings children into libraries to read books), Nick Gibb decided to give a five minute lecture on the virtues of phonics. This had nothing whatsoever to do with Reading Challenge, nothing to do with anyone in the room. I doubt if there was a single person in the room who, if convinced by the highly unconvincing Nick Gibb, and who then thought they ought to immediately rush out and do phonics with a bunch of children, had even the remotest professional chance or reason to do such a thing. They weren't early years teachers, Nick. They were people excited by the idea of getting children in the summer holidays reading books. Clearly, neither tact, empathy or a sense of occasion are Nick Gibb's strong points. Meanwhile, all accounts of his encounters with friends and colleagues have been one of a similar kind: short, sharp lectures on phonics and complete refusal to listen to or be interested in anything that teachers, practitioners or advisers have to say unless it fits his pre-conceived notions of what will and must take place in classrooms. Actually, by and large he doesn't seem to be interested in anything that any pupil does or might do after they've done phonics.

I had a much more enjoyable and friendly time with the 'Expert Panel' that Michael Gove set up many months ago. I (along with many, many other people) was invited to give opinions and advice and I ended up face to face with Professor Mary James, Associate Director of Research in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. However, on my arrival Mary James made it clear that no matter what I was going to say, several aspects of the outcome were already decided! 1. The final 'national curriculum' was going to be very slim, no more than some guidelines. 2. The people 'up there' had decided that content and pedagogy were two different things. The government would lay down the key areas of content, Teachers would be free to work out pedagogy. 3. At the time of our meeting (perhaps nine months ago?), she said that them 'up there' (my words, not hers) were rather keen on giving teachers and schools a list of prescribed or recommended authors.

I tried to find out how slim (I didn't find out) but agreed in principle that parents were entitled to know what schools were going to do in any given area of the curriculum and what they hoped were the outcomes. Like her, I suspect, I thought that the distinction between content and pedagogy is only really sustainable on a piece of paper but not at the moment of teaching and learning. (In the words of W.B.Yeats,'How can we know the dancer from the dance?' (or vice versa, I suspect)). As for the magic list of authors, I said that this had been tried before with the Cox Report in, (from memory) 1989 and had got booted out by a combination of teachers', advisers', researchers' and authors' contempt, derision and direct action.

My own contribution was around reading whole books, turning schools into book-reading communities, and thinking of English and literacy departments as publishing and performing houses. In that way, the issues so dear to the heart of Nick Gibb and Michael Gove - spelling, grammar and punctuation - take place in the real environment of producing texts for people to read, rather than exercises that end up purposeless and dead in...er...exercise books. That sort of thing. And then I went. End.

Given that this was the model of consultation that Michael Gove set up - expert panel receiving guest submissions in face to face encounters - then surely by now they have seen everyone they wanted to see? Perhaps not. Perhaps they're going to go walkabout now? Needless to say, this model of consultation is highly unsatisfactory because it's static. It doesn't involve practitioners showing education in practice, it doesn't involve them researching themselves in action in classrooms. As I've said before, the government has the model for this way of consulting and producing policy with the Language in the National Curriculum Project from the late 80s.

Ironically, at the very moment that the Ministry lets go of hundreds of schools' curricula (to academies, free schools and private schools),  it resorts to the same old authoritarian way of controlling the schools left over. Even more ironically, even as they say that this is in order to perfect education so that it's 'world class', they are quite happy to let another year go by where these left over schools can actually do more or less what they want within the scaffold of the exam system. (I've even heard an adviser stand up in front of a hundred teachers and announce: 'The National Literacy Strategy is dead. Go back to your schools and devise your own.'  And that was over two years ago, on the day that New Labour admitted through its deeds if not its words that the NLS had been a screw-up.)

So, we have a Ministry zig-zagging between diy curricula for some and an authoritarian one for others; a period without direction and a period with direction.

And of course there's every possibility that by the time this new curriculum appears - September 2014, Michael Gove and Nick Gibb will be off frying other fish, spending more time with their families or cooling their heels on the backbenches. And if a new government were to come in in 2015, whatever load of general or specific jaw-ache Gove and Gibb come up with, could be wiped from the record and the whole silly, top-down, piecemeal crap could start all over again.

Do they wonder why we hold them in such contempt?

The Gove-Murdoch Curriculum sell-off scam

I've written about this before and made endless gags about it on twitter but this article - please read it all the way to the end - clearly points to an attempt by Michael Gove to alter the nature of schooling in England. There is a clear intention here to engineer a situation in which schools (Academies, actually) will be primed to buy in large parts of schooling from major corporations. The smokescreen will be 'modernisation' but the motive is profit, provided by the tax-payer. As the article below suggests, the hacking scandal has put Murdoch in the back seat and he must be cursing his luck looking at how his competitors eg Pearson are stealing a march. I suspect that we are due for an announcement from Gove and Cameron on the great techno-revolution that the Tories are going to bring to education and the presence of major corporations will be hyped up as the only way in which this could be made available to schools. This is of course a nonsense. With sufficient investment, government could easily pump up the present 'grids for learning' which are provided free into schools in their localities. Even the tosh that Murdoch et al might claim about the unique resource of News International newspapers overlooks the fact that the London Grid for Learning (provided free into every London school) provides absolutely free the complete archive of the Guardian-Observer going back to the 18th century. With local 'grids' there is the potential for these being run by teachers, ex-teachers and education professionals with no profit-motive dominating matters.  I suspect that in the next few years we will see strenuous efforts being made by major media corporations to smash the local Grids for being 'unfair' competition or some such. 

The schools crusade that links Michael Gove to Rupert Murdoch

The education secretary has close ties to Rupert Murdoch and would be a key figure if he attempts to move into the UK schools market

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• David Leigh
• The Guardian, Monday 27 February 2012
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Michael Gove meets Rupert Murdoch frequently and is an enthusiastic backer of the ideas put forward by the head of his education division. Photograph: David Jones/PA

On a freezing November day in 2010, the education secretary, Michael Gove, turned out in east London to inspect a desolate stretch of dockside ground near City airport, where Rupert Murdoch had offered to build an academy school.

The cabinet minister was accompanied by Rebekah Brooks, then News International chief executive, and an entourage of other top Murdoch staff, including James Harding and Will Lewis.

Despite the unprepossessing venue there was no mistaking the company's enthusiasm for the project. Murdoch described himself in a speech as the saviour of British education, thanks to his company's "adoption of new academies here in London".

It was a high-water mark of the love-in between Gove, Murdoch and the Conservative government. Gove, a former Times journalist, had previously gone out of his way to flatter his own proprietor, writing that Murdoch "encourages … free-thinking".

Shortly after the Docklands visit, the phone-hacking scandal disrupted these close relations. News International's proposed academy was quietly abandoned. Newham council says nothing was subsequently done to fulfil Murdoch's promises.

But Gove returned to his pro-Murdoch theme last week, publicly attacking the Leveson inquiry, set up in the wake of News International's misdeeds, as a threat to press freedom. "Whenever anyone sets up a new newspaper – as Rupert Murdoch has with the Sun on Sunday – they should be applauded and not criticised," he said.

It was a reminder of the extraordinarily close links that still exist between publishing tycoon and Tory politician. One of Murdoch's long-term projects is what he calls a "revolutionary and profitable" move by his media companies into online education. Gove would be a key figure in any attempt to penetrate the British schools market.

The education secretary meets Murdoch frequently and is an enthusiastic backer of the ideas of Joel Klein, the head of Murdoch's new education division. Within a week of his promotion in 2010, the minister was at dinner with Murdoch, according to officially released details of meetings.

The atmosphere could only have been warm. Gove once sang Murdoch's praises in a 1999 Times column as "the greatest godfather of mischief in print" who possesses "18th-century pamphleteering vigour". He wrote that Murdoch "encourages … free thinking. His newspapers … are driven by public demand and the creativity of chaotic, cock-snooking, individuals."

Murdoch in turn was kind to his former employee. When Gove first arrived at Westminster in 2005 as a backbench MP, the Times topped up his salary with a £60,000-a-year column. His wife still works for the paper.

Murdoch's publishing arm, HarperCollins, also gave Gove a book advance in 2004, when he was first selected for the safe Conservative seat of Surrey Heath. It was for a history of an obscure 18th-century politician, Viscount Bolingbroke.

Puzzlingly, the book was never delivered. HarperCollins refuses to disclose the size of the advance and its size is not specified in Gove's register of financial interests. Asked if his advance should be returned eight years later, HarperCollins says Gove "is still committed to writing a book on Bolingbroke but obviously his ministerial duties come first for now". Gove will not comment.

At the Gove dinner on 19 May 2010, Murdoch was accompanied by his then right-hand aide in Britain, Rebekah Brooks. Brooks was also with the education secretary at a second dinner three weeks later, on 10 June, for what his department terms "general discussion".

In a subsequent speech to the National College for School Leadership, Gove singled Joel Klein out for praise. Klein was a US lawyer then running the New York school system. But Klein was also Murdoch's own favourite US educator. His clashes with the teachers' unions and his enthusiasm for academy-style "charter schools" had caught the tycoon's interest. Murdoch planned to hire Klein himself.

Gove told his British audience on 16 June that US reformers such as Klein were insisting on "more great charter schools … free from government bureaucracy" because they were "amazing engines of social mobility".

Within 24 hours of that speech, the minister was once more at the lunch table with Murdoch himself, again with Brooks in attendance and, according to the department, other "News International executives and senior editors", for "general discussion".

At the end of summer 2010, Murdoch formally hired Klein for $2m (£1.3m) a year, plus a $1m signing bonus, to launch what he called a "revolutionary, and profitable, education division". Murdoch bought Wireless Generation, a US educational technology firm, for $360m, and gave it to Klein to run. Murdoch's vision was that he would digitise the world's so far unexploited classrooms. He told investors: "We see a $500bn sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs." He envisaged some of News Corporation's large library of media content being beamed to pupils' terminals.

Gove seemed to be an enthusiast. He met Klein on 30 September 2010, before the announcement of his link-up with Murdoch. The Department for Education does not explain the circumstances, other than saying "more than 10 others" were present for a "general discussion".

The following month, Murdoch flew to London again, to deliver the Margaret Thatcher lecture at the Centre for Policy Studies. He called for a revolutionised education system in the UK "that really teaches … In the last decades, I'm afraid, most of the English-speaking world has spent more and more on education with worse and worse results".

He boasted: "That is why so many of my company's donations are devoted to the cause of education – including the adoption of new academies here in London. There is no excuse for the way British children are being failed" .

Gove was with Murdoch for the celebratory dinner afterwards, along with Murdoch's son James and all his editors. And in the new year, Klein flew to England along with Murdoch himself for three days spent at Gove's department. He was "visiting UK as guest of DfE to explain and discuss US education policy and success", say officials. Gove was photographed visiting the King Solomon academy with Klein, who addressed a free schools conference. Gove dined with Murdoch, and with Brooks yet again, at a dinner hosted by businessman Charles Dunstone, an academy sponsor.

On 19 May, Gove breakfasted with Murdoch in London. The tycoon flew on from that meeting to address a Paris conference of internet entrepreneurs. This time, he went into some detail about News Corp's plans for educational technology. He and Klein had been touring educational projects around the world, in South Korea, Sweden and California. Schools were the "last holdout from the digital revolution" he said. "Today's classroom looks almost exactly the same as it did in the Victorian age …The key is the software."

"I'd expect in the next [few] months we'd be making some acquisitions," Klein told the Financial Times. "There's the willingness to put in significant capital."

He cited the Khan Academy, a not-for-profit producer of educational videos through YouTube, as an example of how technology could add value.

On 16 June, Gove addressed the teachers' college in Birmingham on strikingly similar lines, calling for "technical innovation" in the classroom. He cited the "amazing revolution" of iTunes U in publishing lessons online. The same night, he dined with Rupert Murdoch yet again.

Four days later, Gove returned to the theme in another speech, praising News Corp's new hiring, Joel Klein, and urging his audience to read an "excellent article" Klein had written promoting charter schools.

Murdoch himself, returning to London, spoke at a conference of chief executives. The Times recorded: "Mr Murdoch detailed a vision whereby almost all children would be provided with technology such as specially designed tablet computers. He said that through such advances, 'You can get the very, very finest teachers in every course, in every subject, at every grade, and make them available to every child in the school – or if necessary, in some cases – in the world.'

"Mr Murdoch said that News Corporation, parent company of the Times, would help to spearhead this change by growing its business in providing educational material. He said he would be "thrilled" if 10% of News Corporation's business was made up of its education revenues in the next five years."

On 26 June, Gove was at yet another dinner with Murdoch. He followed it up with the most explicit endorsement to date of News Corp's education project in an address to the Royal Society entitled Technology in the Classroom. He even held up for praise Klein's favourite model, the Khan Academy, which was "putting high-quality lessons on the web".

He said: "We need to change curricula, tests and teaching to keep up with technology … Whitehall must enable these innovations but not seek to micromanage them. The new environment of teaching schools will be a fertile ecosystem for experimenting and spreading successful ideas rapidly through the system."

Murdoch's education project now began to falter, however, because of the looming British phone-hacking scandal. In the US, voices began to question the links between Klein and contracts awarded by the New York education department to Wireless Generation, the technology firm acquired by Murdoch. Klein and Murdoch's education division lost a hoped-for new $27m contract with the New York authorities.

Klein himself was catapulted into a central role in the company's attempts to firefight the scandal. He flew over to London to the parliamentary committee hearings in July. While all eyes were on Wendi Deng as she landed a punch on the foam-pie thrower who attacked her 80-year-old husband during the televised session, few noticed the dry legal figure sitting just behind her.

He now plays a key role in controlling the controversial management and standards committee (MSC) that is house-cleaning at News International by handing over journalists' incriminating emails to the police.

Until Murdoch's UK operation has been fully cleansed of its hacking toxicity, the way will not be open for Klein to resume his education projects, and his formerly close political links with Gove. But the end of the process of "draining the swamp", as one MSC source put it, may now be in sight.

Invited to respond to these issues, a Gove spokesman declined to comment.

WW1 - what a decent Secretary of State for Education would do

Here's a challenge to Michael Gove and the Ministry of Education instead of trying to hit the headlines with abuse of supposedly 'left-wing' interpretations of the First World War; instead of trying to create a fixed ideological interpretation of the war offered without evidence or research; instead of trying to swing the whole of education behind this interpretation - Michael Gove and the Ministry could and should do something altogether different.

With digital communication, we are now in a unique position of being able to have an instant European-wide debate about the First World War. I suggest that Michael Gove and the Ministry stop trying to influence the serious matter of collecting evidence and having an open debate about this moment of history. They should instead use the resources they have at their disposal, help create a digital discussion between a wide number of European researchers and historians to discuss the many aspects of the First World War and its interpretations.

This could take the form, say, of a week-long digital teach-in which could be streamed live and then kept up on line. Various edited forms of the teach-in could be offered. Simultaneous translations would make it accessible to all. Text versions could be provided too.

This would inform and engage. It would stimulate debate. Educationally, it would show students of all ages how history is a matter of debate and discussion, with evidence and information at its core.

Incidentally, it would also show that Michael Gove misused his position of power and access to the media. It wasn't simply a matter of one person 'expressing his opinion' - as we are all entitled to do. By virtue of his position, he has a very particular 'voice' which is beamed out to all. This gives him a kind of false place in the matter of authority. In terms of how historical debate between historians is concerned, Michael Gove has no authority to say what he said about the War. His 'authority' is only that of someone who finds that he holds a post in government. It so happens it's a post which has now accrued more personal power than almost any other government post.

This episode shows a sinister development. Michael Gove, from this position of great power has expressed a highly partisan, politically specific view of a major event in history and urged schools and colleges to adopt this view. It's bad governance, bad historical work and bad educational practice.

We should think up alternatives to this way of going on. I have suggested here, just one possibility, albeit as a way of pointing out what a serious democratic secretary of state would do, one who was interested in true intellectual engagement, inquiry and education.

Guardian reports split behind Draft proposals

Michael Gove's curriculum attacked by expert who advised him

Andrew Pollard says education secretary's proposed changes are too prescriptive and 'fatally flawed'

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• Jeevan Vasagar, education editor
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 June 2012 19.47 BST
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Michael Gove's planned curriculum changes include a compulsory foreign language and lists of words that children must be able to spell. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Michael Gove's proposed reforms of the national curriculum have been attacked as "fatally flawed" by a member of the expert panel involved in drawing up the changes.

Andrew Pollard, an academic who was one of a team of four involved in the review, said the published proposals – which include officially mandated spelling lists – were so prescriptive they denied teachers the scope to exercise their professional judgment. He described Gove's initial instructions to the head of the review team as "crude".

Teachers will be presented with "extremely detailed" year-on-year specifications in English, maths and science that risk wrecking "breadth, balance and quality" in children's school experience, and fail to acknowledge that children learn at different speeds, he said.

Pollard told the Guardian there were two key problems with the proposed changes.

"It is overly prescriptive in two ways. One is that it is extremely detailed, and the other is the emphasis on linearity – it implies that children learn 'first this, then that'. Actually, people learn in a variety of different ways, and for that you need flexibility – for teachers to pick up on that and vary things accordingly.

"The government is keen to have high expectations, but they have to be pitched at a level which is realistic. If they are pitched too high, they will generate widespread failure."

Pollard was not responsible for the detailed programmes of study, but was involved in drawing up the framework intended to shape the new curriculum. This was published by the Department for Education (DfE) last December.

The head of the review team, Tim Oates of the exam board Cambridge Assessment, worked with the DfE to produce the programmes of study.

The proposals published this week include making a foreign language compulsory from the age of seven, as well as introducing more demanding programmes in maths and English.

For the first time, the government will set a list of words that all children must learn how to spell.

The reforms set detailed instructions about learning grammar, including teaching the use of speech marks and possessive pronouns by the end of year 4 of primary school, relative clauses by the end of tear 5 and the use of the subjunctive by the end of year 6.

The reforms will be opened to consultation and are due to be introduced in September 2014.

Pollard, a senior academic at the Institute of Education, described Gove's initial instructions to the head of the review team as "crude". In a blogpost, Pollard writes that the team was asked "to trawl the curricula of the world's high-performing countries, to collect core knowledge, and put it in the right order".

While the idea is attractive, it is "fatally flawed" without considering the needs of children, Pollard writes.

"The new curriculum will preserve statutory breadth, we are told, but, whilst teaching of a foreign language is to be added, provision for the arts, humanities and physical education is uncertain at this point. The constraining effects on the primary curriculum as a whole are likely to be profound and the preservation of breadth, balance and quality of experience will test even the most committed of teachers."

Pollard expressed concern that the new curriculum would be accompanied by a "punitive" inspection regime and tough new tests at 11.

Stephen Twigg, Labour's shadow education secretary, said: "The fact that an expert adviser to the government on the national curriculum has called Michael Gove's plans 'fatally flawed' is highly embarrassing.

"It now seems that after commissioning an in-depth review, the government is ignoring many of its recommendations in favour of its own prejudice. should put evidence ahead of dogma when it comes to education. The curriculum mustn't be prey to political ideology."

The expert's attack on the curriculum reforms is disputed by Oates.

In a statement released by the education department (DfE), Oates said: "Publishing content year by year is not some rigid straitjacket. There remains flexibility for schools in the scheduling of content.

"The draft programmes of study are drawn from a rigorous research base, both domestically and internationally."

While there was greater demand in the content of the key subjects, there was also "greater freedom for teachers" in how they teach it, Oates said.

The review looked at 18 different education systems around the world. "The resulting programmes align us with the best education systems in the world," Oates said.

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "It is extraordinary that the secretary of state would establish an expert panel to look into the national curriculum and then choose to ignore their advice. This government seems determined to impose its vision of education regardless of the evidence or professional opinion."

Gove and Wilshaw go on a Bear Hunt - with rigour and structure

Department for Education

Room 405



Michael Wilshaw walks in.

Michael Gove is seated at his desk.

Gove is shuffling through papers to do with the Kings Science Academy in Bradford. It’s clear that he’s been doing this for several hours now.


Gove: (looking up) I’d prefer it if you knocked.

Wilshaw: I’m sure you do.

Gove: So?

Wilshaw: I thought we ought to run through a few things to do with under-fives strategy.

Gove: Oh that.

Wilshaw: I think we need to flesh out some of the small print.

Gove: What? Now?

Wilshaw: (ignoring) I want to go public on a lesson plan I have in mind. The press have picked up the story very nicely, but we’re weak on detail.

Gove: Good, keep coming.

Wilshaw: So, what we’ve done is take a classic wishy-washy enemies-of-promise way of doing under-fives work and toughen the whole thing up with rigour.

Gove: Remember, I do the ‘rigour’ thing. You can do ‘structure’. I do ‘enemies of promise’. You do ‘lost generation’.

Wilshaw: I had no idea it was a bloody demarcation matter.

Gove: It is.

Wilshaw: OK, have your ‘rigour’. Now let me get on.

Gove: Shoot.

Wilshaw: ‘Bear Hunt’ - do you know it?

Gove: Unfortunately, yes.

Wilshaw: Now the way your enemies of promise do ‘Bear Hunt’ in nurseries and playgroups, I gather from my informants - sorry - inspectors - is that the children chant the bloody thing whilst wandering all over the place sometimes doing the words in the books, sometimes making up their own nonsense, getting their hands messy, climbing all over bits of apparatus or some old junk that they’ve made.

Gove: Really? That is pretty hopeless.

Wilshaw: Worse. So, this is my plan.

Gove: Are you going to take me through this now, I am busy, you know, I’ve got the whole bloody Ecat mess to sort out.

Wilshaw: But you’ve got the Kings Science Academy stuff in front of you.

Gove (losing it) I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. (quietening down) OK, give me your ‘Bear Hunt’ routine, then. I can’t believe I’m spending time on this.

Wilshaw: So, we issue all playgroup, nursery, and reception class teachers and assistants with instructions on how to do ‘Bear Hunt’.

Gove: (grudgingly) Fair enough.

Wilshaw: Something like this - and some of it’s mine.

Gove: For christ’s sake, Michael, I appointed you, I big you up on every possible occasion, there’s no need to tell me which bloody words you write in your reports and documents. Carry on.

Wilshaw: OK, here goes:

“Teacher enters nursery or playgroup area.

Children stand up.

Teacher looks round the room of 2, 3 or 4 year olds.

‘Sit down, class,’ she says.

If she sees that any of the children haven’t blown their noses, are fiddling with their hair, clothes or with each other she says:

“Darren, stop that now,’ and looks sternly straight into the child’s face.

‘Today,’ she says, ‘We’re going to go on a bear hunt.’

If there’s any reaction from the children other than quiet smiling, she restrains them with,

‘That’s quite enough of that, Darren.’

She holds up the book.

‘This is a book,’ she says.

‘These are the pictures. These are the words. You look at the pictures. I read the words. Please don’t try to read the words because they are not phonically regular.’

She should now say clearly to the children.

‘What did I say?’

She should then get them to repeat after her:

‘We are not going to read the words because they are not phonically regular.’

Gove: I hate saying this, but this is bloody good.

Wilshaw: If I liked you, I would take that as a compliment. Even so, thanks.

The teacher now opens the book, saying, ‘I am opening the book.’

She then recites:

‘We’re going on a bear hunt’

and invites the children to repeat after her.

Any child not repeating it, she should say,

‘Darren you didn’t say it. Stand up. Now say, ‘We’re going on a bear hunt.’

She should do that over and over again until such time as Darren says the line.

If he still refuses, he should sit separately from the other children with his face to the

wall.

The teacher should now say,

‘We’ is the plural of ‘I’, and it is one of the personal pronouns. and invite the children to repeat it several times.




Gove: Bloody hell, Wilshaw, did you write this?

Wilshaw: With help.

Gove: Who from?

Wilshaw: If I said the word ‘Toby’ would that give you a clue?

Gove: Smart move. Carry on.

Wilshaw: Well, I’ve got the same sort of thing with ‘going’ - verb but I’ve run into a spot of bother with ‘bear’ and ‘hunt’.

Gove: They’re bloody nouns.

Wilshaw: But is it a noun phrase? Or is there an argument for saying that ‘bear’ is an adjective? I mean it ‘describes’ what kind of ‘hunt’ it is.

Gove: Just say, ‘nouns’. They’re 2 and 3 year olds. So long as they chant, ‘it’s a noun’, that’ll be OK.

Wilshaw: Great. So, we go on through the rest of the book, like that.

Gove: What about all that action stuff that kids do, waving their arms about when they say, ‘big one’?

Wilshaw: Absolutely not. This is about eyes and ears.

Gove: Good. Eyes and ears.

Wilshaw: Are you writing that down?

Gove: Sure, I’m thinking of using that. I’ve got a big one coming up with the W.I. That’s the sort of stuff they’ll understand.

Wilshaw: Oh, I was rather hoping to keep that one for myself.

Gove: Tough. Too late.

Wilshaw: I’ve put in some strong guidelines for all the later stuff in the book, when they’re running away from the bear.

Gove: Like?

Wilshaw: A lot of stern looking, some warnings about ‘staying on your bottom, Darren’ in case he gets carried away.

Gove: And that stuff about getting under the covers?

Wilshaw: I have the teacher breaking off there for a short lesson on heat retention.

Thus:

And why do we cover ourselves with blankets, duvets and quilts?

Then, not waiting for the answer, the teacher says,

‘In order to retain body heat.’

She asks the children to repeat:

‘In order to retain body heat.’




And then, and only when all children have repeated this, she says,

‘We’re not going on a bear hunt again.’




She should then close the book and say, ‘And that is the end of the book.’


Gove: What about that picture of the bear at the end?

Wilshaw: What about it?

Gove: No, I was just thinking I quite like that.

Wilshaw: So?

Gove: No, nothing. Fine. You mean, the children don’t look at that bit?

Wilshaw: (irritated) It comes after the words. It’s only a bloody picture. What do you want the children to do with it?

Gove: No, no, of course not. Sorry, that’s good. That’s very good. The teacher closes the book. That is very rigorous.

Wilshaw: Structured.

Gove: OK, good, so I launch this at the W.I next week, right?

Wilshaw: Like hell you do. This is for my talk to the Early Years conference this Friday.

Gove: You’ve got a bloody cheek, you know.

Wilshaw: What are you going to do about it?

Gove: OK, OK, you can go now.

Wilshaw: I was going anyway.


Wilshaw leaves.

Gove goes back to his papers.

He can be just heard muttering about someone at a free school somewhere issuing invoices for rent that was not being charged in the first place.