Remember the days when Gove used to passionately defend every last part of his policies? When he used to whip statistics out of his sleeve about kids in Shanghai, and then camp it up with a French Lesbian poem before berating some poor teacher who recently taught equations through the medium of mime? I miss that Gove. He wasn’t at committee today.
The reason I miss him is because Gove’s strength has never been detail but he was (almost?) forgiveable for being a person who was at least trying to *do* something. Love it or hate it, misguided or otherwise, there was at least energy and a willingness to engage with important issues. Instead, today we got a Gove who was admittedly handed a series of rather bitty questions but instead of engaging, he practically shrugged. On my count he said “I’ll write to you” at least six times (that’s short for “I don’t know but I’ll get a minion to find out”) and there was a lot of mention of other people – Edward Timpson, David Laws, Michael Wilshaw, Charlie Taylor. The impression became clear that these are theguys Gove thinks are actually doing stuff. Which can only leave one wondering what his own time is being spent on?
Is it ever too late to work on our Social Emotional Learning? In January, the BBC reported on research that links students’ mental health and drug or alcohol use to their chosen subject. As a former psychology undergraduate, I know that people sometimes comment on how choosing to study psychology is often motivated by students’…
Place-based policy and the ‘Levelling Up’ agenda ‘This [the UK’s] centralised [policymaking] approach has had several negative consequences for past efforts to level up. It under-utilises local knowledge, fails to cultivate local leadership and has often meant anchor institutions in local government have lacked powers, capacity and capability. These shortcomings have gone hand-in hand with…
It’s a Thursday, so after finishing work yesterday I headed over to a local community centre and spent the evening as part of a team running a weekly youth club. We ate sausage rolls, chatted about how everyone’s week has been and worked on a digital art project that the young people have been leading…
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