Gove is desperate to avoid fallout over free schools

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Underqualified: This Labour Party campaign meme highlights the drawbacks of Michael Gove’s foolish and expensive ‘free school’ experiment.

The country has been concentrating on government sleaze for the past week or so – and this is a mistake. We should also monitor government incompetence and thankfully Michael Gove is around to provide plenty of it.

He wants organisations that are part of his struggling ‘free schools’ pet project to receive special fast-track attention – to avoid the political embarrassment that would be caused by their failure.

Last year the project was rocked by the failure of the Al-Madinah Free School in Derby, and the resignations of unqualified head teachers at Pimlico Free School in London and Discovery School in Crawley. Vox Political discussed all three at the time.

The Discovery School was one of four that were declared inadequate by Ofsted and closed down at the end of March.

Last week, The Observer revealed that Gove wants to hush up any further damaging revelations by ensuring that problems are tackled before Ofsted can publicise them.

The article stated: “It suggests that party political considerations are now driving education policy a year ahead of the general election.”

Quite. It is also a sharp reminder of how far the Coalition government has deviated from its original claim, to be uniting “in the public interest”.

The plan adds extra pressure to the Education department, where morale has already plummetted due to Gove’s determination to employ his own advisors, to overrule the expert advice provided by civil servants in favour of ideologically-motivated dogma.

It also shows that Gove is giving preferential treatment to his pet project. State schools go into special measures after receiving a ruling from Ofsted that they are inadequate – and can remain there for more than a year.

More damaging still is the fact that many of the problems with free schools have nothing to do with education, but are organisational in origin. According to the article, these include: “Operating in temporary sites without a clear permanent home; new, inexperienced and often isolated trusts needing to upskill themselves to run a school for the first time; instability in principal appointments and senior leadership teams.”

So when you hear that your child’s school has been under-performing because it has been deprived of resources and support from the Department for Education, just remember that this has happened because we have an Education Secretary who is more concerned with hiding his own inadequacies – problems that could have been avoided if he had concentrated a little more on the details.

On the basis of this term work, Mr Gove, we’ll have to give you an ‘F’ – for ‘Fail’.

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Britain’s young strivers have no hope for the future

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Coalition, Conservative, depression, government, insecure, Labour, Liberal, Liberal Democrat, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, negative, no future, organise, people, pessimist, politics, struggle, suicide, Tories, Tory, trapped, vote, Vox Political, young

No future: This is how young people feel about the nation of their birth. Image by Banksy (at long last, I get a Banksy onto Vox Political!)

Young people in the UK have never had it so bad, according to a BBC report.

The young men from families of skilled or semi-skilled workers – the “strivers” with whom we have all become familiar over the last few weeks of political crossfire in the House of Commons – are described as “deeply pessimistic” about their future chances in life.

I’m not surprised; in fact, I have every sympathy for them.

When I was a nipper, back in the 1970s, life was for the living. A person could be relatively secure in the knowledge that they would be able to take their education as far as their abilities allowed, before finding employment according to their skills in a relatively supportive job market. This would allow them the financial freedom, in time, to buy a house and enjoy relative security in life.

It’s a long time since I was a child. By the time I was an adult, many of those securities had been taken away by a Conservative government that was only a shadow of the vicious, Conservative-led government we have today.

Education was eroded by the introduction of loans instead of student grants; the job market started to shrink because Tories like to keep us all insecure – it helps them cut wages; and as for getting a mortgage, well… I have never owned my own home.

And I belong to the generation before the young people of today!

Is it any wonder that more than two-thirds of them expect never to own their own home, if the last people in their families to own a house – professional families, let’s remember – were their grandparents?

Of course they’re going to feel trapped, and of course they’re going to feel more negative than people from poorer backgrounds; they realise that, in this country, the opportunities are not there for people with ability. No, the only people with a chance to rise in Coalition Britain are those with connections. It isn’t what you know – it’s who you know, as the old saying goes.

And here’s another thing The suicide rate in my generation is skyrocketing. I live in a town of less than 5,000 people and I can think of two people who ended their own lives recently – due to depression – with a third threatening to do so.

What does that tell the next generation about the country where they live and the life they’re going to have here?

Worst of all is this: I don’t think any of them have the get-up-and-go to do anything about it.

I don’t mean the same as Norman Tebbit did when he said, “Get on your bike”, exhorting our strivers to go out and look for work. The jobs aren’t there (oh no they’re not, Tory reader, no matter how much your ministers try to tell us they are).

I mean this: The only way the downtrodden classes ever won any freedom or privilege in this country was by struggle. They got off their backsides and demanded it. Some of them died for it.

But now a ruling elite, that bears no resemblance to you or me, is turning back the clock – removing those hard-won freedoms and ignoring the protests of those they affect.

Because they know: You don’t vote.

So you won’t vote them out.

And if you don’t vote, you won’t take the next logical step, which is to organise – join a political party that promises to restore your freedoms and privileges, or form one, if none of the current crop are to your taste.

You don’t have the motivation; you can’t see the point. But that’s how the Labour Party got started and that organisation is now the main opposition party in Parliament, after having been in power for 13 consecutive years.

Times have changed lately, and for the worse, I’ll grant that.

They can change back again.

All that’s needed is the will to make a difference.

… Or do you have something better to do?