Academy lesson

Yet, while his admirers will relish Mr Gove’s denouncement of academy critics as the “enemies of promise”, and his decision to take 200 poorly performing primary schools out of LEA control, the Minister still needs to win over mainstream opinion.

While there has been some improvement at academies created in Yorkshire, the national picture is still a mixed one and it is too early to judge the performance of those schools that only recently chose to go it alone.

Mr Gove also needs to recognise that concerns persist about eligibility rules and whether academies are compelled to follow the National Curriculum when, for example, they have inadequate facilities for PE lessons. That said, the thrust of the Minister’s mission – a need to drive up standards – has to be applauded, even if doubts persist over the methodology and the continuing debate between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats about whether free schools should be entitled to make a profit.

For once, England appears to have an Education Secretary who appears to relish the prospect of presiding over a “decline” in exam results in order to counter the grade inflation, and concerns about the diminution of standards, that have emerged in recent years. Mr Gove wants exams to be meaningful again. He wants history to be restored to the curriculum, (though this contradicts the free school ethos where headteachers set their own path. He is a stickler for classroom discipline.

His challenge now is to implement these objectives while convincing his opponents, or the ambivalent, that taking schools out of local authority control is the best way of driving up standards in those areas which have found themselves at the foot of national league tables for far too long.