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LRB blog

Gove Watch

Ross McKibbin

Followers of Michael Gove’s career might have missed its latest highlights. The cabinet has now decided to repeal the rights of parents to oppose the expansion of ‘popular’ schools and, despite the embarrassingly vociferous opposition of parents at Downhills primary school in Tottenham, seems determined to part the school from the LEA. Parental choice is allowed when parents support the Conservative Party and not allowed when they don’t. The Lib Dems appear to have no quarrel with this. No doubt it is their definition of community politics. Meanwhile, Gove has come to an arrangement whereby employees of Barclays Bank – yes, British bankers – will be co-opted to help free schools and academies with their finances.

education michael gove

Comments

  • 22 January 2012 at 12:53pm
    Hugh Mulrooney says:
    The schools minister has revived the "name-and-shame" policy, first used by Blunkett and Byers fifteen years ago. It makes it harder for schools to overcome their difficulties, as they cannot attract talented teachers and middle-class parents withdraw their children. They enter a spiral of decline. Maybe that is the intention.