Gove hits out at ‘ideologues’ opposing academies plan

Mr Gove said most local authorities were being “co-operative and constructive” towards the Government plans for struggling primaries but he said some were being “obstructive” in their approach.

“They are more concerned with protecting old ways of working than helping the most disadvantaged children succeed in the future,” he said in a speech at an academy in south-east London yesterday.

“Anyone who cares about social justice must want us to defeat these ideologues and liberate the next generation from a history of failure.”

Mr Gove singled out Haringey in his speech, saying he had been asked “not to challenge” the leadership of the lowest-performing schools in the deprived north London borough.

“But for years, hundreds of children have grown up effectively illiterate and innumerate,” he said. “In one of the most disadvantaged parts of our capital city, poor children have been deprived of the skills they need to succeed.

“Defenders of the status quo say these schools shouldn’t be judged in this way because they have a different approach – they are creative or inclusive. But you can’t be creative if you can’t read properly and speak fluently, you can’t be included in the world of work if you aren’t numerate.”

He added that the same “ideologues” and “enemies of promise” who were “happy with failure” claimed it was not possible to get the same results in the inner cities as the “leafy suburbs”.

“Let’s be clear what these people mean. Let’s hold their prejudices up to the light. What are they saying? ‘If you’re poor, if you’re Turkish, if you’re Somali, then we don’t expect you to succeed. You will always be second class and it’s no surprise your schools are second class’. I utterly reject that attitude.”

Mr Gove’s speech at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College came as new figures reveal there are now 1,529 academies, compared with only 200 when the coalition came to power.

Of those, 1,194 have been converted from local authority schools, while 335 have been sponsored. A total of 45 per cent of all maintained secondary schools are now either open or in the pipeline to become academies.

Across Yorkshire 138 schools have converted or are set to convert to academy status. Calderdale has had the highest number of schools wanting to become academies in the region with 19 bids to the Government.

Academies are state-funded schools run autonomously from local councils.