Michael Gove
When the great Tory Lord Chancellor F. E. Smith gave his rectorial address at Glasgow University in 1923 he promised the undergraduates there assembled that the world offered ‘glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords.’
A century on and our new government takes a rather different view. Instead of glittering prizes, it wants the young to know their place, limit their horizons and settle for less. In its first few days in power the Burnham administration has shown itself resolutely anti-intellectual, hostile to ambition and backward-looking.
The new Education Secretary Lucy Powell has promised us that she will end the ‘over-focus on academic outcomes’ in our schools. In other words – bring back stupid. Powell argues that ‘over-focus’ has ‘left too many young people behind.’ The truth is precisely the opposite. Too many schools have still not focused enough on getting every child to succeed academically. A failure to teach properly has left them without the knowledge, skills and qualifications which gives them the ability to become authors of their own life story. The children who are left behind are those entirely capable of getting the good GCSEs which open up future glittering prizes to them but who do not secure those passes because their schools are insufficiently focused on academic excellence.
