It wasn’t long after Michael Gove took office as Education Secretary before he was called a “miserable pipsqueak” by Labour MP Tom Watson and got savaged by an angry parent on a radio call-in.
But last week, when the abolition of the AS-level – an exam taken by lower sixth-form pupils – faced the staunch condemnation of both teaching unions and Cambridge University, it became clearer than ever that Gove has shifted the terms of the education debate beyond recognition.
If you wanted any more evidence that the Tories wanted to turn the clock back to about 1930, look no further than this week’s announcement of the Ebacc (the Gove level).
Just as my dad (who’s in his 80s) had to complete a school certificate – a bundle of different subjects – 21st century school leavers will have to pass exams in a selection of disciplines from English to pure maths, physics and chemistry in order to go on to further study at A Level.
Before you start assuming the very worst, let you remind you all that I have not really slept properly since March 2005; it’s called having three young children, all of whom are terrible sleepers. I explored this topic a few months ago on my own blog.
My sleep – always pretty bad – is currently beyond terrible. Child number 3 is teething and waking on average four or five times a night. But the other night my broken sleep was made even more torturous by thoughts of Michael Gove.
Gove and his right-wing Tory allies, such as the Daily Mail, earnestly desire to re-introduce selection , but know that if they did so straightaway in one leap they would court a whirlwind of resistance. So he’s adopted the next best thing – phasing out GCSE which was designed for Comprehensives and bringing back the Certificate of Secondary Eduacation (CSE) for ‘less intelligent’ children, as was used in the secondary moderns of the 1950s. The ultimate goal is obvious: the resurrection of the old grammar school/secondary modern divide. Continue reading
